Wishing for silent night after a trip to the mall
I know I’m overdosing on Christmas music in the mall when I seek refuge in the Hot Topic store because I’d rather listen to some punk rocker screeching about being suffocated by pain than hear one more rendition of “Jingle Bell Rock” blaring from a store’s loudspeaker.
Hot Topic -- a chain for the trendy grunge and Goth crowd -- had none of the items on my Christmas list, but I ducked in there because it was the first place I passed in the Northridge mall that wasn’t crowded, hot and determined to pummel me with piped-in holiday cheer.
Then I discovered there was a Coach store next door. It was cool, brightly lighted and quiet enough that I could hear the click of a clerk’s keys unlocking a display case for a customer. Its background music was just that -- an instrumental version of a Christmas standard, chiming away so softly I couldn’t quite tell what song it was.
Suddenly I felt so relaxed, I wanted to blow $500 on a purse for somebody on my shopping list.
As someone who once considered Christmas music a welcome companion during holiday shopping, I’m not sure why the ceaseless assault of holiday tunes is sending me over the edge this year.
Is it just too much, too loud? Is it so overbearing it makes merriment feel like an obligation? Is it that the holiday music is turned on even before Halloween decorations are put away? Or is it that the tacky songs that stores play are so far from the Christmas carols I’d like to hear that they register as noise, rather than soothing reminders of seasonal peace? If I have to listen once more to Beyonce bragging in her takeoff on “The Twelve Days of Christmas” about all the bling bling her man is showering on her, I’m going to shred what’s left of my shopping list. I know I’m not alone. In holiday surveys, shoppers say “crass commercialism” is the No. 1 thing that makes gift buying unpleasant, but being barraged with Christmas music isn’t far behind. Almost one in 10 say the prospect of enduring endless hours of “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” is why they’d rather shop online.
And pity the poor store employees, stuck in the din for hours on end. In Britain, the retail clerks union got so many complaints from workers last year, they asked the government to consider a ban on piped-in Christmas music. The jingly carols and chirpy Christmas anthems threaten the hearing of workers, raise their blood pressure and depress their immune systems, the union contended.
Marketing experts say ambient music influences shopping trends. Pair low-key Christmas music with a subtle Christmasy scent and the atmosphere makes shoppers likely to linger and spend more on gifts.
But crank the heat and the music up and bombard me with gaudy flashing lights and that’s not atmosphere. It’s sensory overload. Not only won’t I linger, but I’ll be cranky when I leave.
And I’ll probably spend the rest of the day trying to get the lyrics of some overplayed Christmas ditty out of my head.
I’ve resigned myself to the fact that mall music at Christmas -- like the weather in Southern California -- is a landscape alive with microclimates.
Just as a trip from home to work can take me from overcast, chilly, wind-whipped streets to cloudless skies and shirt-sleeve breezes, going store to store in a mall right now requires constant mental shifting.
I wait in line long enough at The Gap that I leave humming “Frosty the Snowman.” Then I stroll into This Is It, Macy’s store for juniors, and find rappers chanting the praises of a woman who “moves her body like a cyclone and makes me want to do it all night long.” I feel disoriented and out of touch, like I’m somewhere I don’t belong.
Chain stores’ background music choices are dictated by corporate bosses more concerned with “branding” than spreading Christmas cheer. And the stores I wind up shopping in -- with teenage girls on my Christmas list -- aren’t trying to connect with a 50-year-old’s musical sensibilities.
“We might have a track or two that’s Christmasy seasonish,” said a salesclerk named Alex at the Northridge Hollister, the Abercrombie & Fitch progeny for young teens. “Our music is basically what we play all year.”
He thinks the music is a big draw. “It’s really energetic. It creates our whole atmosphere.” Not to mention it’s so loud you can feel the beat thumping in your chest.
I intended to find a shirt for my daughter but got so discombobulated by the noise, I grabbed a gift card and fled, casting a sympathetic backward glance at those poor adults stuck in the din.
But Alex said no one has complained about the music, Christmas tunes or otherwise. “I think the adults are really into it,” he said. “I look around and see heads bobbing.”
What he’s seeing, I’m afraid, is the beginning of a seizure.
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