The Dark Hymnal

Last night was a very bad night for me. About 9.45 pm, watching TV, a horrible harbinger came along that will give me no peace until the end of December at best.

A TV advertisement for toys or cutlery or pharmecuticals or whatever had a child in a wool hat and a Christmas Number One.

If you're not familiar with the phenomenon, here's how it works. Whatever musical single happens to be the highest-selling on Christmas Day, the 25th of December, gets noted down in a big book. The book is titled 'People will associate this with good times'. It's like the principle of "sex sells" but with more poultry and cake. That song will be played ad nauseam from now until I finally move to Afghanistan.

I hate seasonal music. I don't know why- perhaps it's a conjunction of my inability to dealwith cliché and my hatred of moods induced by advertising. It doesn't help that musicians try to score a X#1 by recording the most syrrupy crap they can muster up. Mention snow, even though the UK mostly experiences snow in January. Mention Holly, even though it is at it's prime in November. Mention children, even though they're bestial cretins. Wait for the cash to roll in.

From the potential field of, I guess, two thousand and four x#1's to choose from, they could nat least vary the repetoire a little. "Here it is, Merry Christmas". No, as I discussed, it's NOVEMBER. "Do they know it's christmas time at all". Well, you're talking about people in predominantly Muslim countries so I'm going to go ahead and say "No, or maybe they don't care".

The one ray of hope for me is that some misguided executive will hold to the formula a little to strictly, and advertise a THREE DAYS ONLY LAST-MINUTE SALE with last's year's number one: the theme from Donny Darko, "Mad World".