Orange and gold music?

Seventy-degree San Antonio in mid-December is as postcard pretty as it is in our mid-April profusion of wildflowers.

Yards are covered in orange, brown, and gold leaves, extraordinarily beautiful on these foggy mornings.  The umbrellas of trees on these streets are as vivid today as New England's in October.  The leaves not yet fallen make the trees stand out like bright jewels on the white fog. I love it!

I also love the lights on trees at night.  Driving across the dam just now I saw a single huge tree draped in blue lights trunk to top--breathtaking!

What I don't love so much is that every store, car service department and phone-wait music has been Christmas music so long that it's getting tiresome.  In my treks around town this morning to attend to my car and other things, I heard  "Let it snow" about five times.  It hasn't snowed here in years and I don't expect piped music to encourage a single snowflake to fall.

What I'd like to hear is an assortment of music from different traditions and geographies.  What I'd enjoy for shopping and waiting would be either silence or  music that features orange and gold holidays, not just the Norman Rockwell version of white Christmas.

Having spent the past few days with women of all faiths and none, I wonder: if it's tiresome to me, what must it be like for people who don't celebrate Christmas?

I'll be home for Christmas, the song says--and I will indeed be driving to Georgia and Virginia for the holidays.  But what about the many people who are homeless and the people whose family members are no longer there to see?  No wonder--against the backdrop of happy Christmas music--there's an epidemic of the blues during the holidays.

I know--I sound like the grinch!  But even as I write this, I'm wrapping little presents for my writing group tomorrow and making a cake.