When do you start playing Christmas music?

Never! I hate the stuff. I have to implement a “No Christmas music until after Thanksgiving” rule with my partner to save my sanity.

edit: Ok, I will play Christmas music while decorating a tree, or sometimes on Christmas itself.

The day after Thanksgiving. What I hate is when the department stores start playing it the day after Halloween. That is just too soon for me.

I never play Christmas music, but I will start listening to it as soon as radio stations start playing it.

Which will probably be after Saturday.

Only while opening presents. It’s also played while the tree is being decorated, but I don’t participate in that.

@jonsblond Where I live (SF Bay area), you can find Christmas displays as early as Late August.

I hate it when stores/radios/media jumps the gun. Let us enjoy pumpkins and turkeys, Christmas has a whole month to itself and I don’t like it when people start preparing in October or November.

After Thanksgiving I do play music because it’s my motivation to do well on my finals. Basically the more Christmas music there is the closer I am to 6 weeks off of school :D

The 1st week of December is time for Der Bingle, et al. I stop playing it after Boxing Day.

When do I? Like @MacBean, when the tree is being decorated and Christmas day.

My mom keeps Elvis’ Christmas Album in the car all year round. I don’t mind, it’s festive.

I also hate the big rush of stores putting out decorations. (Our local Home Depot has had Christmas stuff out for, I think, about 6 weeks now.) I don’t like to start listening to Christmas music till after Thanksgiving, especially on the radio as they just play the same stuff over & over. My husband calls me Scrooge… but then again, he is known to whistle Christmas tunes any time of the year. I actually feel more like listening to it after Christmas than before.

I play it all year long. I like Christmas music.

@ccrow: ”I actually feel more like listening to it after Christmas than before.”

Yes! I get irritable and Scrooge-y about Christmas music before it’s actually Christmas day, but I can tolerate it for a week or so after Christmas is over. I’m not really sure why…

Never.

Hell, I can’t walk into a store that’s playing the stuff without having an cerebral aneurysm.

Humbug, I say.

From the first week of December up until New Year’s. The week after new year’s is kind of nice too, make it feel as though the year was a little longer for me :P

Usually December 1st. Although we mostly play “Christian” (rather than secular Santa) Christmas songs, I admit that I find the need to play the classics “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer”, “Dominic the Donkey”, and “Percy the Puny Poinsettia” every once in a while just to annoy my hubby!!! (Even though I risk coal in my stocking :)

Not until December. Any time before that gives me the shakes thinking about my days in retail!

Mid December. Although Nutcracker is an exception, I listen to it whenever I feel like it throughout the year.

In my business July is when my Christmas art line needs to be ready. So in the studio in July I put out the pine air freshener, play Christmas tunes and have a little tree with lights. By the time the work is done I am rather burned out on the music and do not play it again till after Thanksgiving.

1st of Decmber when I’m getting the decorations and tree out of the loft and during the whole of December…. Roll on CHRISTMAS!!! Yippeee!!

Two days of the year: Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I enjoy it on those two days and that’s about it! The incessant Christmas music everywhere, for months, drives me a little nuts.

I tend to like instrumental and classic (Nat King Cole, etc.) Christmas music the most.

My family’s Christmas tradition is that the first weekend (Saturday to be exact) we would decorate the house and buy/put up the tree. We play the classic Christmas collection I’ve been listening to since I was a wee-tot. Then the music is occasionally played on Sundays, then on Christmas Day and everything is taken down New Year’s Day ^_^ – LB

We start at mid night of thanksgiving and dont take anything down or stop listening to christmas music until my birthday (Jan 21) <3 lol.

I love Christmas and the whole feeling of the season….I start playing it after Thanksgiving when I am making Christmas cookies, wrapping presents or just doing stuff around the house. It makes me happy :)

I hate Christmas music during the Christmas season for some odd reason. It’s always just so repetitive… I like the mostly unknown pieces, however. Older stuff, classical music that’s related to the season, but I don’t like the pop kind of things very much. I’ll tolerate it, but yeah.

I tend to sing them in the summer/autumn, actually, and that’s when I like them. Otherwise, no. xD

I usually don’t have a set date. But this year it will start on Nov. 3rd, because I’m going to go the the Trans-Siberian Orchestra :)

On the Sunday we call “First Advent” in Germany.

December 1st. Also when I get out decorations and stuff (and it’s what we did in my family as a kid). For me, the Christmas season doesn’t begin until December 1st.

As a kid, the 1st was like its own holiday; it was the day we would go to the garage and get out the big boxes of decorations and lights. It was a lot of fun.

I am singing right now. come on everybody! Sing along!

City sidewalks, busy sidewalks
Dressed in holiday style
In the air
There’s a feeling
of Christmas
Children laughing
People passing
Meeting smile after smile
And on ev’ry street corner you’ll hear

Silver bells, silver bells
It’s Christmas time in the city
Ring-a-ling, hear them sing
Soon it will be Christmas day

Strings of street lights
Even stop lights
Blink a bright red and green
As the shoppers rush
home with their treasures

Hear the snow crunch
See the kids bunch
This is Santa’s big scene
And above all this bustle
You’ll hear
Silver bells, silver bells
It’s Christmas time in the city
Ring-a-ling, hear them sing
Soon it will be Christmas day

:: sings along ::

My family and I would usually go out to a tree farm the day after Thanksgiving and cut down a blue spruce, bring it home and let it sit on the deck for a night, and then put it up the next day along with all the other decorations. Only then could we officially bust out the Nutcracker. (Which sounds way more sinister and sexual than I meant it to sound.)

@filmfann I was going to ask this question on the weekend! Great minds!!!!

We will begin our incessant carol singing and playing on Nov.1st…that’s when a couple of radio stations, one of our satellite stations and one of our cable music channels begin the switch.

At any time during the year, our son may hum or sing: Hark the Herald Angels, Rudolph, Jingle Bells…etc. Our family loves celebrating with music.

We promised our son that we’d bring down the village houses on Nov 1st, after we pack away the Halloween decor. He can’t wait to see the little houses, and personally wants to decorate them with snow himself this year.

I’ve already listened to some. I have some great recordings from the 40’s and 30’s in my collection. Lots of jump blues so those are always golden for me.

I only like very few of the songs that they play on the radio for the holidays. Most of them are too slow, too shallow and just too dull.

I think I am the Grinch.

@MissAnthrope

:0(

@SpatzieLover – I just have this really jaded view towards Christmas and having it in my face and over-commercialized for months just makes me grumpy. >:(

@MissAnthrope I understand. Many feel the same as you do.

Just curious, how many kids in the US open the first door of

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advent_calendar

I’ve heard it’s become a bit more popular than in the past. In Germany almost every kid gets one. Green kids get one that can be reused the following year.

@mattbrowne

I had a chocolate Advent calendar to open every Christmas for years (even up to recent years). :P

@DominicX – Great, so I guess you will pass on the tradition ;-)

@mattbrowne

I think I will. That and the Advent wreath.

@mattbrowne & @DominicX – I had one every year, too. That was a tradition my grandparents (dad’s parents) started when I was little and I loved it. It was so exciting opening up that door and seeing what was in there. I think my mom liked it so much that she started the tradition with my little sister, who has one of the reusable ones that my mom puts chocolates in herself.

@mattbrowne Well, I’m not Lutheran ;) but yes we have an advent calendar. Actually, we have several advent calendars each year. This year, my son will be surprised each day when he opens a door to his Barbie and chocolate advent calendar. For our family I purchased this Mr.Christmas advent calendar this year. Last year Starbucks sold a truffle filled advent calendar…Mmmmmmmmm!

Do you celebrate the 12 days of Christmas? We do a reading and allow our son to open a present each night.

@SpatzieLover – No, there are only presents on Christmas Eve. We keep the tree till January 6. There’s the so-called Catholic “Sternsinger” custom, see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Boys%27_Singing_Procession

although today boys and girls do it together. And because Germany is half Protestant and half Catholic, nowadays many Protestant kids go along as well.