Colby has some justifiably grinchy words about Christmas muzak and commerce:
as I am prepared to admit that an unusually good fruitcake might offer some gustatory happiness to a person emerging from a prolonged hunger strike, I am prepared to admit that there may be elements of genuine musical worth concealed in the Yuletide canon.
But what enjoyment remains after you pass these nuggets of quality through some antiquated synthesizer, exsanguinate them of any remaining trace of swing or lively tempo, and broadcast them through a vaporous, trebly PA into a environment clotted with reverb? If you really liked Christmas music passionately, you’d regard malls as churches of Satan. You’d take up arson as a hobby.
Christmas music in stores and malls is clearly not meant to be an active pleasure, consciously savoured by the discriminating shopper. It is one of those cases in which capitalism behaves much as its dumbest critics always argue: as a conspiracy against the public.
Read the whole thing here.