This is what people really think about Christmas music

With Christmas music played in retail spaces since as early as the 1st of November, it stops feeling festive before the big day even comes. Many people admit that it has a devastating effect on their mental health. Here is what science has to say about it.

Christmas music can be draining for retail workers, according to a study

Christmas music is meant to spread cheer but it instead is damaging and a hazard to our health, according to seasonal statistics.

A study of more than 2,000 customers and retail staff in the US and UK, conducted by Soundtrack Your Brand, a startup that helps companies identify great background music for stores, found that a quarter of employees find Christmas music draining. They think an excess of it in their workplace makes them less festive, with one in six saying that it negatively affects their emotional well-being.

The report, which recommends playing Christmas music every ten minutes rather than non-stop, noted:

This adverse effect may hurt service quality, since emotionally damaged staff may not deliver top-notch service.

A quarter of British and 17% of American shoppers resent Christmas music

It’s not just retail staff who are being driven to deafening desperation by hearing the same Christmas songs over and over again in an interminable loop. It’s all of us.

According to another report, a quarter of British shoppers dislike being subjected to Christmas tunes while out and about. 17% of US shoppers say they don’t enjoy being hammered over the head with holiday music either.

With people being stressed about the cost of living crisis and not being able to afford essentials, let alone Christmas presents, a lot of songs sound insulting, and not cheerful.

The report also noted that 43% of people who hate holiday music think it’s too repetitive and 26% said they dislike the materialism of Christmas music.

Some traditional Christmas songs sound creepy in the modern world

A lot of festive music is indeed extremely materialistic. But, worse still, a lot of it is just deeply weird if not outright disturbing.

Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, for example, is a classic of the genre, and the most-played Christmas song of the past 50 years according to the American Society of Composers. But some say that it can be read as an early warning about the powers of the surveillance state and the pervasiveness of sexual predation.

The song goes:

He sees you when you’re sleeping / He knows when you’re awake.

Who thought that would be a good children’s song?

And then there’s the 1944 call-and-response duet Baby, It’s Cold Outside which is listed by the Urban Dictionary under the heading Christmas Date Rape Song. It’s basically a man plying a woman with booze so she can stay a little longer because, baby, it’s cold outside, ‘what’s the sense in hurting my pride’.

Thankfully, Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You syncs well with the reality where Christmas presents became a luxury and all we should ever want these holidays is each other.

Sources used:

- The Guardian: 'Finally, proof that Christmas songs really do your head in'