Why Avoiding Holiday Music May be Good for You

We’re shopping for Halloween candy when we hear an unseasonably familiar tune. Hark, can it be true?

“It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas,” blares the loudspeaker above the Halloween costumes and autumn-scented candles. The holiday music season has begun. 

Is it Grinch-like or Scrooge-ish to want to escape Christmas music? Not according to some experts, who say we might actually benefit by avoiding too many renditions of “Jolly Old St. Nicholas” (sorry, Santa). Get the candy-cane-coated details below.

Is ‘Christmas Creep’ Creepy?

If you suspect stores start playing holiday music earlier every year, you might be right. There’s even a name for that phenomenon: Christmas Creep. Some national retail shops program their holiday music blitz to kick off more than two months before Christmas primarily because they believe they can subliminally suggest that it might be time to start shopping. 

But our bodies may react to that early chorus of holiday music by feeling stressed, according to clinical psychologist Linda Blair. Just hearing a Christmas tune may send us into worry mode. 

We’ve got the party to plan, the presents to buy and wrap, holiday cards to send, and somehow, in between, our normal to-do-list. Hearing “All I Want for Christmas” play over and over and over may make us even more anxious than we'd ordinarily be.

Blair also noted several reasons for becoming triggered by holiday music:

• Stores typically play Christmas music too early in the season and too loudly. Sensory overload can really bother many people.
• Being surrounded by holiday music every time we shop may make us feel forced to begin preparing all of the trappings of The holidays, causing us to impulse buy and subsequently harming our budget intentions.
• We may react emotionally to songs that connect to our pasts or trigger memories, making us feel vulnerable while we're standing in the middle of a store. "Music goes right to our emotions immediately and it bypasses rationality," explained Blair. 
• For retail employees, being forced to hear holiday music all day long may add to the busy shopping season’s stress. Workers may feel irritated by their repetitive nature and burnt out by the combination of overwhelming scents, sounds, and stressed-out patrons.

No Thanks! And the Backlash

We may hesitate to confess how we feel about holiday music, even to those close to us. But statistics show we’re not alone in wincing when we hear “It’s the Most Wonderful Time Of Year” on repeat.

When Consumer Reports polled people to see if they dreaded anything about the holidays, 90 percent had complaints. Of that group, almost 25 percent listed “seasonal music” as their top annoyance. So if confession is good for the soul, you're likely to find others who feel the same.

Holiday music may be particularly triggering for those who have negative childhood memories of the holidays. Depressing or stressful occurrences in our lives when we were young might turn holiday music into a harmful reminder of the past, noted neuropsychologist Dr. Rhonda Freeman. 

Maybe you can form an anti-holiday-music club that meets to listen to non-holiday music while indulging in a little holiday treat? We can be festive without subjecting ourselves to the things that annoy us, and doing so in solidarity has a particular appeal.

How To Cope? ‘Joy to the World’ On Earplugs

We invite you to join our very unofficial Stop the Holiday Music Harassment club! Here are our tips on how to ease the stress of these tunes if they're bothering you:

• Go Online: Hear that sound? Blissful silence. Shop for the holidays in the quiet comfort of your own home rather than suffer at the music-filled mall. 
• Bring Earplugs or Wear Earmuffs: Become proactive about your own sound space by using modern tech to help you turn down and tune out the holiday music. Take a pair of earplugs when you shop or wear earmuffs to reduce your musical exposure —or just wear some earbuds and listen to what you want. What's that sound? Ahh, it's the bliss of personal choice in the sounds that're going into your head.
• Deck the Home With Boughs of Holly: Researchers found that when homeowners decorated their dwellings’ exteriors for the holidays, others perceived them as friendly. Channeling our holiday music frustration into decorating may help us feel productive while providing the opportunity to make new friends —hopefully, some non-musical ones. 

It's important to remember that so little of the holidays are actually about music. There are thousands of days to get your holiday on while blocking out the aspects that annoy you. But the key is to recognize how much they bother you and then to take steps to protect your space. No apologies are necessary! Find some solidarity with friends and block out the offensive parts. May your holiday be exactly like you'd wish it to be, with everything you love and little to stress over. 

Copyright 2020, Wellness.com