As Christmas is drawing nearer, I find myself finally understanding the point of all the songs about winter and snow. Sure, I also often find myself inserting random acts of violence and zombies into them to try and stave off the annoyance of hearing the same song 5 times a day at work. But when there's fresh snow on the ground and everything is just a little bit sparkly, you can understand why someone would write a song called 'winter wonderland' and play it incessantly throughout November and December. Do I wish the song called 'winter wonderland' was better? Sure. But I understand the sentiments.
Working in retail, however, I hear a lot of stupid Christmas music. One that immediately comes to mind, and is the inspiration for the this blog post (I have a point, I promise) is one called 'Thanks for Christmas'. The song doesn't really specifiy who we're thanking for Christmas. I like to assume Jesus, but I doubt it somehow. Anyway. The second part of the chorus of this assinine song says:
'Thanks for Christmas
Thanks for all the winter friendliness that's snowing down
All around the world'.
And that, my friends, is just silly. It is only winter in half of the world at Christmas. Or slightly more, given that the largest inhabited areas are all in the Northern Hemisphere. Even so, it only snows in the more northern parts of the northern hemisphere. I may have exclaimed loudly in my store when this song came on a few days ago
'Well, that's just plain stupid'. I went on to explain the above argument. My co-workers looked at me funny. Then, the inevitable question referred to in the title of this blog post:
'Isn't it weird having Christmas in the middle of Summer? I mean, it's hot, right? That's so strange'.
And I realised something. As much as a Summer christmas is totally normal to me, because I've had 24 years to get used to the idea, a winter Christmas isn't weird. Because even though Christmas in Darwin was regularly rainy and Christmas in Adelaide was regularly 35 degrees, we're so surrounded with European and American ideas of what Christmas is that snow and ice and cold don't seem odd to me.
I now have a very strange desire to get a copy of 'Santa wear your shorts' by Hi-5 and blast it loudly. My room mates have already complained that I don't have any 'normal' Christmas music, it wouldn't hurt. I blame my friend Megan for the need for it to be Hi-5 specifically, though, that I use to try to reverse the attitudes of an entire hemisphere. Who's with me?
