So, are you sick of Christmas yet?
Are you sick of TV ads that have been playing for weeks full of pretend happy families trying to induce you to spend family-wrecking amounts of money? Are you sick of Lily Allen wanly singing wan Keane songs alongside animated images of bears and rabbits? Are you thinking, nervously, that any day now you'll hear Noddy Holder screaming "It's Christmas ..." and know that you're going to hear him screaming that every day, several times a day, between now and December 25?
You are? Sorry, we've only just begun.
Today is the day when the Christmas albums arrive in shops. Kim Wilde, Mary J Blige and our own Susan Boyle are first off the mark, and next Monday here come Christmas records from (deep breath) Leona Lewis (Christmas, With Love), Welsh operatic brothers Richard & Adam (the imaginatively titled The Christmas Album), cheesy violinist Andre Rieu's Christmas Collection (that one comes with a DVD, you lucky people), Moya Brennan's An Irish Christmas (she's Enya's sister didn't you know?), indie star Connor Oberst, aka Bright Eyes, giving us A Christmas Album (see Richard & Adam), 4 Girls, 4 Harps at Christmas (which sounds like the title of an episode of The Vicar of Dibley really), an R&B compilation Soulful Christmas (on which you can hear Otis Redding sing Merry Christmas Baby if you so require), Kelly Clarkson (who has daringly not included the word Christmas in the title; her album is called Wrapped in Red) and, most unlikely of all, reality stars the Robertson family, stars of Duck Dynasty, giving us Duck the Halls. I may keep that one off my own Christmas list.
What do they have in common? Well, apart from the fact that a surprisingly large number of them feature versions of Silent Night (clearly this year's hymn of choice), they take their place in a long tradition of albums that celebrate the festive season and/or seek to squeeze the last shekel out of the willing/gullible fan.
It is a long and frankly often ignominious tradition. For every A Christmas Gift For You, Phil Spector's wall of sound effort, with added sleighbells and tinsel (probably the only Christmas album you really need), there are a dozen ropey old will-this-do efforts from people who should know better. Even a normally peerless record label like Motown got Christmas albums wrong.
The Christmas record all too often is where music goes to die. In the past Liberace and even Roseanne Barr (yes, her off the telly) have polluted the airwaves with their festive renderings.
Why do we let them get away with it? Because it's Christmas, I suppose. It's the season for forgiveness after all.
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