It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year
November 12th, 2012 by Katherine Moller
Christmas music is incredibly polarizing. Where do you stand? Do you love it? Do you hate it? The other day on twitter, Jian Ghomeshi tweeted that we should not be playing Christmas music until December. This led to a barrage of tweets and retweets about the topic with, by the sounds of it, most people agreeing with him.
I happen to love Christmas, and I love the music that comes with it, which is really good since I teach violin/fiddle lessons and will be hearing Silent Night many times between now and December 25th. My students are always excited about learning Christmas music because these songs are familiar to them. These are tunes that they have heard every year for their whole lives.
The only restriction that I put on working on Christmas music is that I chose not to teach it until after Halloween. This seems like a good balance for not working on it for four months, but still having long enough that my students can play the music well by the Christmas recital.
I do understand though the frustration with having Christmas music played in the malls as soon as Halloween is over. I fully agree with the idea of generally not having Christmas music playing until December 1st. There are always exceptions to every rule, but I think that the stores and malls could wait until December 1st anyway, if for no other reason than the sanity of the people who work there! I will personally continue to enjoy all of my students playing their Christmas music from now until the recital!
photo credit: ClaraDon via photopin cc
