"Sleigh Ride" Makes the Baby Jesus Cry

When you have four cats, it's usually not a good idea to go home emptyhanded.

So on my way home, I stopped at what we affectionately term the Kwik-E-Mart in the parking lot adjoining work. I live pretty close by, so I could almost hear the hungry wailing of ravenous beasts. But it turned out to be just a Christmas jingle.

Never mind that Thanksgiving is tomorrow. Would it kill these people to wait just one more day? If I were wealthy and powerful, I'd lobby Congress to pass legislation forbidding the wanton display of any Christmas paraphernalia until after dusk, Thanksgiving Day.

No, that's a lie. If I were wealthy and powerful I'd move to a Greek island and hire a large number* of attractive male personal assistants. For, you know, errands.

Unfortunately, this particular piece of Christmas music was "Sleigh Ride," by Leroy Anderson, and for as long as I can remember this has been perhaps my least favorite piece of music in the known universe. I do have a pretty solid basis for comparison. I happen to own - and proud of it, too! - a Liberace Christmas CD I once received as a white elephant gift at an office holiday party. It's an awe-inspiring thing. It sounds kind of like the head Blue Meanie from Yellow Submarine dressed up in a sequined Santa suit and OD'd on Valium, managing in the process to lose bowel control all over a powder-blue baby grand. To add to the overall effect, it's very poorly remastered, so sometimes the pitch sort of slides away a bit and you end up having to tilt your head to the side while you listen to it. It hurts. It makes you feel tainted - yet kind of sparkly, somehow.

It beats the pants off "Sleigh Ride."

So this is not the most promising start to the holiday season, though I still have hopes. I only wish people wouldn't keep pushing to get started earlier and earlier, because that just means everybody gets sick of it and takes everything down when Christmas proper isn't even over, and I'm the only person I know who leaves up the lights and decorations until Twelfth Night, and I absolutely will not take them down a moment sooner.

And if the neighbors give me dirty looks for it, I'll sic my cats on them.

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*It's important to have several, because this increases the odds that one or two of them might turn out to be straight.