CHRISTMAS MUSIC

My name is David Steven Simon and I am a Christmasmusicaholic which I believe is the side effect of Thanksgiving turkey because even as I am still digesting that is when my addiction kicks in.

I will occasionally, during the year, tap into an errant all-year Christmas radio station (who exactly is their audience?) for a taste, but it never feels like the same post-Thanksgiving high. Is it any wonder that guys like Eric Clapton and a Whitman’s Sampler of Jazzmen have done Christmas albums?

Guys like that know their drugs.

Christmas music hits me like a just torn asunder bag of Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies which smacks you in the face, Cagney style, with the sheer built-in, faerie-like daffiness of chocolate.

Women know this well.

Women are experts in many things, including the science of Uggs (which causes them to lightly stomp around like show ponies) and in the sheer delight of all things cocoa.

Screw waterboarding. Do you want to get a Manafort to sing like a canary? Dangle a Nestles Crunch Bar in front of him and he will blather incoherently about himself like Trump at a Press conference on, well, anything.

The funny thing about Christmas music is that I will listen to almost anyone performing it, including performers that I normally would shun. Sean Hannity and the Tabernacle choir recorded live before an audience of psychopaths at Folsom Prison? Crank it up! (P.S. I have spent most of my life never knowing what the hell a tabernacle is.

I find it all irresistible and impossible to ignore which is probably because I happen to be Jewish and growing up, Christmas used to make me feel like...like...Shit. Hold on. Ella Fitzgerald is singing “Sleigh Ride” on Spotify which is forcing against my will to sing at the top of my lungs which will inevitably lead to my ejection from my neighborhood coffee shop, Antoinettes in Hastings-on-Hudson. Again.

When the season starts I go traditional and listen to a steady infusion of Nat King Cole, Andy Williams, Burl Ives, Frank Dean, etc, until the sheer repetitiveness of it all starts to make me feel like I’m spending the holidays at Creedmor Psychiatric Center which prompts me to turn to all things quirky, jazzy and indie.

And man are there delights to delight in: Ingrid Michaleson, Sufjan Stevens, She&Him, The Roches, Sia, Joel Paterson, Lindsay Stirling and even, I swear to god, the new Monkees Christmas album. For Jazz, give me your gentle, your melodic, your sweet: Oscar Peterson, Diana Krall, Steve Tyrell, Ella and on and on. Sadly, Bill Evans, my absolute favorite player, never made a Jingle Bill album. Then again if he did, it might have prompted me to have a kind of blue, blue Christmas.

Once I’ve exhausted that supply (say by day two of endless loop listening) that is when it’s time to go Country which makes me feel even more Jewish than Mrs. Maisel, but dang, I love it. Give me Garth, Reba, Martina, and Willie and I am one crooning cowboy.

The crooning, sadly, is not reserved to just my home and coffee shop. Wherever I go, from CVS to Starbucks, if Christmas music is muzaking in the background, I’m Pavarotti in the shower.

The reality is there is nothing like Christmas music.

Certainly, before Adam Sandler, my people did not invent great Chanukah music. Ah, but instead they wrote basically every single classic Christmas song that you adore including, Winter Wonderland, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Santa Clause is coming to Town, Let It Snow, Let It Snow, It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer, Sleigh Ride, White Christmas.

And let’s not forget that Jesus was a Jew.

So maybe the reason that I love Christmas music so much is that most of it was written by guys named Irving, Jascha and Mel which coincidentally happen to be the names of my accountant, lawyer, and rabbi.

That is probably why I love so many of the early radio comics, all four of the original Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers and songs by Gershwin and virtually every single great Broadway composer from Gershwin on.

Maybe my love for Christmas music goes even deeper.

Perhaps wrapped like Christmas present inside each and every tune is a message, that is delivered telepathically, that says, “this song is for you too.”

Full disclosure: I did both Christmas and Chanukah for my kids. The first time that I set up a Christmas tree, part of me felt like all the plagues of Passover were going to visit our house and repeatedly smite me. Or Elijah was just going to bitch slap me in the face, sip the wine and leave.

But once we were up and running, it didn’t take very long to feel the Christmas spirit and it was wonderful.

We lived in Sherman Oaks, California then, where, in a nearby park, they actually trucked in snow for the kids to sleigh ride on...which they had to do FAST as it was 113 degrees. You got at best one, maybe two downhill rides and then it was pretty much surfing.

The truth is we Jews are everywhere and not just Christmas.

We are Superman (created by two Jews) and all things Stan Lee, Kirk, Mr. Spock and Dr. Spock, The Fonz, Sammy Davis, Jr (whose Judaism came to him via Eddie Cantor, who visited him daily in the hospital when he lost his eye, and read bible stories), Sandy Koufax and on Friday and Saturday nights Madonna/Esther. Growing up I thought that everyone that I loved was Jewish: Ed Sullivan? Jewish. The Beatles? Jewish. Actually, their manager Brian Epstein and their music publisher Dick James were tribe members and Paul and Ringo have both married Jewish women: Paul Twice. Ringo married Barbara Bachman of Queens, New York.

Still, especially during the holiday season, we Jews remain insiders who are endlessly relegated to the outside and yet we affect your lives deeply all the time. Irving Berlin took on Easter too.

Only the stupid and the fascist don’t get it.

I am often ridiculed for my passion for Christmas music and I’m fine with that.

Because when I go home in a few hours, I will turn on all the twinkle lights, switch on my Hue lights to red or green, crank up any one of the Christmas channels on Sirius XM and just like that, I will feel enchanted, tucked in, protected and peaceful.

To add to the bliss, it is lightly snowing out right now and snow here on the east coast has the magical power to dampen the frantic cacophony of the outside and turn the world into a silent movie, or in this case, a silent night movie.

In this fortress of solitude where there is no BREAKING NEWS, no infantile, illiterate President (fact: if you Google the word “idiot,” Trump will come up, which is based on the sheer number of times millions of people have put the words “idiot” and “Trump” into one sentence) and no reason to want to hit yourself in the head repeatedly with the remote control until you are comatose.

There is only love.

Hold on, The Chipmunks just started singing, “The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late)” and I’m about to get kicked out of my proctologist’s office. During an exam.

Merry Christmas!