November 11, 2025

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It's mid-November, and Hallmark Channel's Countdown to Christmas is well underway. Then again, they were running Christmas movies all summer, so it's not like that ushers in the season.

Let's get something straight right away. I grew up in a household that had a rule: No Christmas music until after Thanksgiving.

I hated that rule.

My personal Christmas season, especially after we moved to Utah when I was sixteen, begins on the first chilly day in September. That's right: All of autumn is Christmas season to me.

And I don't mean astronomical autumn, beginning at the equinox. Those aren't the real seasons, anyway. Astronomical summer, for instance, officially starts on about the 21^st of June. But that day, now and for a thousand years at least, is Midsummer Day.

The real seasons are tied to human activities. Spring traditionally began when the ground could be worked -- usually early in February. But I'm not a farmer. For me, spring begins when the bulbs -- crocuses, daffodils, hyacinths, irises -- pop up and bloom. In my yard in North Carolina, that means late February or early in March. Who cares how relatively long day and night are. North Carolina spring is glorious, with new blooms coming until well into summer.

And summer begins, for me, when it's too warm to wear a jacket. That's long before Midsummer Day.

Agriculturally, autumn has nothing to do with falling leaves, and everything to do with ripening wheat. When the harvest begins, that's autumn.

But I'm not a farmer. My yard grows some vegetables, but no grains at all. For me, autumn begins when the kids go back to school. Which can be in early August or after Labor Day. In our house, it's when my wife starts teaching early-morning seminary classes in our living room.

(That's right, LDS high school students come to our house at 6:30 in the morning and study scripture together for a solid hour, four days a week. In other congregations, the class only lasts 50 minute, five mornings a week. But we like the Fridays-off schedule.)

I usually sleep through seminary, firmly ensconced in my bed upstairs -- largely because I usually don't fall asleep until an hour or two before seminary, and often not until seminary is over. To feel the chill, I'd have to get up a lot earlier. But I still get those Christmas vibes.

Because the Christmas season begins on the first day with a chill in the air. Usually not till mid-October, where I live now. (This year, I wore a jacket for the first time on the tenth of November. But that's because I had been in the hospital and on bed rest from mid-October on.)

People who complain about Christmas decorations, music, and store displays showing up too early get no sympathy from me. In fact, when they start one of their diatribes, my first response is "Shut your miserable joy-killing tooth cave." I don't say it out loud, though, because my parents raised me better than that. I just leave the room.

Or, if I can't get away, I either change the subject or start singing, rather loudly, "It takes a little Christmas, right this very minute, candles in the window, carols at the spinet, oh it takes a little Christmas now." (That's a song from the musical Mame. It can also be sung to the accompaniment of "It Takes a Woman" from the musical Hello Dolly! by the same songwriters. That's okay. Handel plagiarized his own tunes, too, in Messiah.)

I don't even mind the abbreviation "Xmas." The X is Chi from ancient Greek, and it's the first letter of "Christos." It's still saying "Christ-mas." It just takes up less space and requires a lot less spelling ability.

Christmas trumps all. Since I despise Halloween on general principles, I'm just fine with having Christmas decorations in the stores before that icky holiday.

But that doesn't mean that I welcome everything "Christmasy" with equal approval.

For instance, I don't consider Die Hard to be a Christmas movie. Sure, it takes place at Christmastime and there are decorations. But not for one minute does it actually matter that it's Christmas. And it's in Los Angeles, where it isn't even winter. Ever.

Then there's Little Women, which, like the book, begins with Christmas, but then peters out in a disappointing non-Christmas romance with a German-immigrant professor in New York. (Because the book ends so badly, none of the adaptations are great movies, either.) Sorry, Louisa May Alcott. It's one of the most beloved novels ever, but you didn't find a good romance for the character based on you anymore than you did for yourself in real life.

Real Christmas Movies

There are good Hallmark Christmas movies and lame ones, but they're all genuine Christmas movies. I have others that I love even more, starting with It's a Wonderful Life, which is on my list of greatest movies of all time. Some moron colorized it. I prefer the black-and-white version.

Then there's Love, Actually, which is also in my top-ten list. Because of that movie, just hearing a few bars of "God Only Knows" makes me tear up: That's what they play during the deeply moving closing montage. If you don't like that movie, you're entitled to your opinion. Just don't talk about your asinine negative attitude while I'm watching it. I'm not a violent guy, but there are limits, and in my fury I might throw soft things at you.

Both Holiday Inn and White Christmas star Bing Crosby, the first with the incomparable Fred Astaire and the second with the manic Danny Kaye. Both of them are most notable because of the song "White Christmas."

But White Christmas is not a sequel. It's a remake of Holiday Inn with a slightly different script. They're both wonderful Christmas musical movies. I'll put my thumb on the scales for Holiday Inn because it came first, and because, you know, Fred Astaire.

But then, White Christmas has Rosemary Clooney, Vera-Ellen, Dean Jagger, and beloved character actress Mary Wickes.

Aw, come on, it's a good Christmas season when you get to watch both of them. But not, I suggest, as a double feature.

I also have a list of purported Christmas movies that I think of as anti-Christmas. The Nightmare Before Christmas is an abomination just for existing -- I have never watched it and never will, no matter what you say. I'm just not a fan of Tim Burton or of horror holiday movies, I guess.

Bad Santa. Nuff said.

There are multiple enjoyable versions of A Christmas Carol, but I don't consider Bill Murray's Scrooged to be a valid Christmas movie, mostly because it's mean-spirited and unfunny and it sucks. Bill Murray owns one holiday (yes, Groundhog Day); he isn't even in the running for Christmas.

I also had reservations about the musical Scrooge, when it was new, partly because I sometimes spent days on end with the vile song "Thank You Very Much" playing in my head. But it is the favorite Christmas movie of some people that I love, so I have overridden my misgivings and I now enjoy watching it. With them.

Non-Christmas Songs

The single most annoying anti-Christmas music for me is from the movie How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Don't get me wrong. I have always loved the Dr. Seuss book, and the animated movie is very well done. But radio stations have the horrible habit of thinking of songs and tunes from the movie as "Christmas songs," and they are wrong. When a wonderful Christmas playlist is interrupted by "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch," I change stations or mute the car radio.

All the songs work, more or less, in the movie. But none of them depends on or promotes the Christmas spirit. And all of them are worthless by themselves. They should never be played outside the movie, period, especially at Christmastime.

By contrast, the Vince Grimaldi music from A Charlie Brown Christmas is very good and I can listen to it at any time -- except Christmas. The instrumental music is not, by any stretch of the imagination, Christmas music. It's good jazz. Leave it out of any Christmas season playlists.

Even though there's an amazing amount of ham acting in The Sound of Music, I find the movie charming in places and tolerable as a whole. But the song "My Favorite Things" is NOT A CHRISTMAS SONG.

Why did anybody ever think it was? Because several performers have that song on their Christmas album. So there seems to be an idea floating around that the song has something to do with the birth of Christ or the myth of Santa Claus.

Brown Paper Packages

Is it the line "brown paper packages tied up with strings"? Does the act of wrapping a package turn something into a Christmas gift? I think not.

I remember back when mailing a package required brown paper and you wrapped it with string. But because the cheap string we could afford at our house was easy to break, we wrapped it around about five times each way and then tied it in a big fat square knot.

But that was before strapping tape was in common use, and way before the plastic tape we now use for sealing cardboard boxes was available at all. And that was before the US Postal Service used machines to "read" addresses on packages. Those machines are likely to snag on string-bound packages, plus the string is often placed over any label, so it's not machine-readable, because the address-reading robots can't move the string aside like a human being can.

In short, in America, at least, brown paper packages are not tied up with string. They're rarely wrapped in brown paper. I don't know if we even have any brown paper in our house. We just put them in boxes with padding inside, tape them off, affix a label -- usually a Fedex or UPS label -- and drop them off at the appropriate depot. We do that more than usually at Christmas, but "My Favorite Things" does not mention the packages we actually use to ship off Christmas presents to family or friends.

"Amazon packages shipped to our friends," that's what we're doing at Christmas. But it doesn't rhyme with "these are a few of my favorite things" so I guess it wouldn't work. Nor would "Amazon packages left on the porch."

Rock and Yule

I don't really like any of the attempts at rock-n-roll Christmas songs. Still, I don't switch away from "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" or "Jingle Bell Rock." I even kind of enjoy "Little Saint Nick."

But there are popular Christmas-season songs that I loathe so much I switch them off whenever they come on a radio or Alexa device that I control. Here is my list of hated "Christmas" songs:

1. "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer"

Because it involves Santa Claus, I can't claim that it isn't a Christmas Song. It's just a stupid, stupid, stupid song. And it includes bullying as if it were a normal, unstoppable thing.

But I know the parody variation "Rudolph the Two-Gun Cowboy" by heart. And yes, it involves murder. But I learned it when I was nine. I don't sing it at adult parties.

2. "Frosty the Snowman"

I hate this song so much. It isn't Christmasy at all, and it rates at least one more "stupid" than "Rudolph." The only thing worse than the song itself is the hideous Michael Keaton movie, in which, or so I'm told, Frosty comes to life because the snowman is possessed by the spirit of the children's dead father.

Yeah, nothing says Christmas like being haunted by your father's ghost.

3. "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus"

The only amusing part of this song is the title. You've seen the title. You never, never, never have to hear this song.

4. "All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth"

Performed by a lisping child, this novelty song is amusing -- exactly once. After that first time, if it comes on the playlist, bring out the shotgun.

5. "Baby, It's Cold Outside"

This song isn't about Christmas, it's about sex. I'm in favor of sex, on general principles, and even on cold nights in winter, but it is a gross distraction from Christmas. And if they were married, nobody would need to go out in the cold. I switch this one off.

But this does not apply to "Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow," which is about romance. In my mind, anyway. Christmas is a romantic time, which is why Hallmark Christmas movies mostly work even when they aren't all that good or have annoying performers in them.

6. "Last Christmas"

I originally hated this song because it is completely incoherent. But then they made a movie based on the song, starring Emilia Clarke (brilliant as Daenerys in Game of Thrones). The movie makes as much sense of the song as is humanly possible, and it's a sweet and charming love story (and ghost story).

Because of the movie, I no longer switch away when "Last Christmas" comes on. Which pleases my wife, because she has long been a fan of George Michaels, in or out of Wham! But I don't actually like the song. It just makes me think of a pretty good movie.

For a while I included the Bing Crosby classics "Do You Hear What I Hear" and "The Little Drummer Boy" on my list of hated Christmas songs, because they were so relentlessly overplayed when I was a child that I got sick of them. But in my twenties, I discovered that I was nostalgic about them and now they feel warm and comforting when they come on the radio.

The song "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day," based on the Longfellow poem, has long been in my church's hymnbook, but I never really liked it, partly because there is such a sharp turning between the bitter beginning and the hopeful ending that no music can serve equally well for both halves of the song.

However, the poem was saved for me by the Casting Crowns version, with entirely different music and a brilliant performance. If you haven't heard it, and you want a version of "I Heard the Bells" that really works, this is it.

And "The Little Drummer Boy" is saved for me by the version performed by For King and Country. The YouTube video, though good, doesn't do it justice, because in live performance, it begins with an absolutely overwhelming drum fanfare, and returns to pure drum interludes that leave me breathless.

(The harmonies and choral backups are great in both versions, however.)

Most Annoying Christmas Song of All Time

"The Twelve {Damn} Days of Christmas"

But the song is part of Christmas for me every year.

Because this song exists and is pervasive in our culture, it is available for romantic exploitation.

Late in 1973, freshly home from my two-year mission in Brazil, I fell in love with the perpetually amazing Kristine Allen. But with no money and no driver's license, courting had to be inventive. On a day in December I decided to make her my favorite cake, a spice cake with penuche icing that my mother always made, at my request, for my birthday.

I was going to make it a three layer cake, with the top layer being a smaller square cake.

I'm an adequate baker, but for some reason the cakes rose too much and formed domes. In trying to compensate for the unflatness of the layers while icing it, the cake got all skewampus. But it was still going to be delicious, so I decided I should give it to her, ridiculous as it looked.

On a card I wrote: "On the First Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me ... a lop-sided tumbledown cake."

Then I realized that it was December 14^th. That meant I had enough days to give her a present a day for twelve days, with the twelfth one being her main gift on Christmas day.

That was 1973. This year will be the fifty-third Christmas that I've given her twelve pre-Christmas gifts. From the second year on, I have started on the 13^th of December, so that the twelfth gift is opened on Christmas Eve. (On Christmas, my gifts to her are not related to the twelve days.)

The gifts are mostly inexpensive and often amusing (or so I hope). Whatever they are, my main gifts on Christmas Day have to (in my mind at least) top them all.

That first year, the twelfth day -- my main gift to her -- was a huge hamper-size basket with eleven other baskets inside. We still use many of those baskets.

On the eighth day I hung eight bananas descending the stairway railing in her family's home. (Parental collusion was required, of course. But both sets of parents were in favor of my courtship of her that Christmas -- our mothers especially.)

I still try to get the numbers to sync up with the gifts at least a few times each year. But it doesn't matter. Not many things are sold in groups of seven or nine or eleven.

But my long exploitation of the twelve days of Christmas has nothing to do with the fact that, musically and lyrically, "The Twelve Days of Christmas" is mind-numbingly boring and infinitely stupid. (Explanations of the "symbolism" in the song are after-the-fact inventions. Completely bogus.)

Add to that the fact that the official twelve days are actually after Christmas -- from Christmas to Epiphany Eve (Dec. 25 to Jan. 5) -- and I have to say, at 74 years old, I have heard "The Twelve Days of Christmas" all the times that I ever need to hear it in my life.

One partridge in a pear tree, two turtledoves, three French hens, four calling birds, five gold rings. Six geese, seven swans, eight maids, nine ladies, ten lords, eleven pipers, twelve drummers, variously a-laying, a-swimming, a-milking, dancing, a-leaping, piping, drumming.

Got it.

I don't hate the song intrinsically. I had fun with it as a child. But now I just can't stand listening to the whole damn thing. It uses up too many of the minutes that I have left to live.