Point: It’s time to listen to Christmas music 

Haley Galvin | Entertainment Contributor

There is never a wrong time to get into the Christmas spirit, and students should begin to do so as soon as possible by turning up the radio and jingling all the way.

This is the perfect time to start listening to Christmas music because it offers a way to lift spirits and put everyone in a holly, jolly mood. Halloween is filled with scares, gore and an overall sense of dread—Christmas music, on the other hand, provides just the opposite.

Full of light-hearted and uplifting messages, Christmas music brings joy to the world and gives listeners a warm feeling inside to fight the cold outside. “The Christmas Song” by Nat King Cole, for example, describes the beautiful scenes of winter and Christmas.

“Everybody knows a turkey and some mistletoe help to make the season bright,” Cole sings in his raspy voice.

Listening to songs with these beautiful images and jingly beats right after a terrifying holiday like Halloween can help people lighten up and have an overall sense of wonder and delight, just as the Christmas season demands.

Listening to Christmas music often evokes memories of holiday cheer and happiness. Christmas brings many people back to a peaceful memory in their lives, and a commonality among a lot of those memories is Christmas music.

“Music helps because it provides a rhythm and rhyme and sometimes alliteration, which helps to unlock that information [memories] with cues,” according to sociologist and social commentator Tiffany Jenkins interviewed in a BBC Culture article.

Hearing a song from a familiar memory can often bring people back to that time and can put a smile on everyone’s face, as well as build anticipation for the holidays to come.

“The music is so uplifting and energetic,” Angie Scherer, freshman pre-nursing major said. “It makes me feel happy and ready for Christmas.”

Christmas music also helps fight the winter blues or seasonal affective disorder. SAD often causes people to experience symptoms of depression following a certain seasonal pattern, such as winter, because of the lack of daylight and cold temperatures.

Renowned researcher Norman Rosenthal did a study conducting surveys across the U.S. on SAD and found 5 percent of Americans suffer from it each year and another 10 to 15 percent have a milder form of the disorder. While it is not as serious as major depression, SAD can make the winter months less enjoyable, and an easy fix to the blues can be found in Christmas music.

The upbeat tempos and positive messages from each song can help to lift the spirits of those who are caught in the winter blues. The chimes in the beginning of “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” by Mariah Carey, along with the endearing words, can help cheer up anyone who may be sad around the holidays. Christmas music takes the winter weather and portrays it with joy and happiness, turning the dreary weather outside into a winter wonderland.

Closer to the holiday season, everyone is often very stressed with family and shopping, and people tend to forget the little things like Christmas music.

“As music can absorb our attention, it acts as a distraction at the same time it helps to explore emotions,” according to a 2016 Psych Central Article.

Listening to Christmas music earlier rather than later allows people to enjoy the holiday season before last minute shopping and cleaning get too hectic. There is never a wrong time to listen to Christmas music. Let the most wonderful time of the year come early and start listening to Christmas today.

Point: It is never time to listen to Christmas music

Ryan Janovic | Entertainment Contributor

Christmas music is an enormous middle finger to our species, and when it points toward Earth, the obnoxious rattle of jingle bells follows closely behind.

Every year the storm of holiday cheer comes too early. By late September, there were already advertisments picturing Christmas decorations in Walmart and Target circulating online. Michaels, 2341 Sycamore Road, has trees up already.

It seems like every artist has to have a Christmas album or at least a couple of songs. David Bowie famously sang “Little Drummer Boy” with Bing Crosby in 1977, and The Ramones even got in on the action with 1989’s “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want To Fight Tonight).”

That last one is especially interesting because punk rock is about individuality and going against the grain, which is basically the opposite of Christmas music’s tendency to bleed together into a homogenous bowl of candle lit, faux-jazz schmaltz.

Christmas music wouldn’t be so annoying if there were more than 12 songs that actually get played. Songs like “Frosty The Snowman,” “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” and “Jingle Bell Rock” will be inescapable for months when winter rolls around.

In addition to a lack of original contemporary work, some songs haven’t aged well in the eyes of students.

“I really don’t like ‘Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer’ because it’s really repetitive, and it makes no sense,” junior English major Katie Neumaier said.

Those are just the contemporary hits; don’t forget the traditional tunes like “Joy To the World” and “O Come All Ye Faithful,” which have been reappearing like persistent house flies for hundreds of years.

Take “Silent Night” for example. In 2015, Spotify reported their service offered a walloping 26,496 different versions of the traditional ballad. At some point humanity needs to look inward and say, “maybe we don’t need tens of thousands of versions of the same song.”

There is a common argument from students that Christmas music belongs in December and not earlier in the year, according to a Nov. 6 Northern Star poll. The poll revealed 20 of the 31 people who responded don’t want to hear Christmas jingles until December.

“I think every holiday deserves it’s time to shine,” freshman business major Kennedy Wallace said. “[You] can’t overlook Thanksgiving.”

The holidays should be given room to breathe, and people’s ears should be spared from flavorless, generic music. Let December be a month for giving, specifically giving others the gift of not torturing them with Christmas music.