Dec 8, 2016 3 min read

If I could have avoided it I would have. But I had to return some things, and so I drove to the mall this week. Like many of us, I’ve been able to stay away from the retail maze by doing much of my shopping online. But there I was.

I’ve written before about the auditory assault of the Christmas music that’s played in the stores. Starting sometime after the jack o’ lanterns have been put out with the trash, the chain stores roll out the holiday tunes. They are all the same, and they are all irritating.

It’s time to revisit the topic. Since the last time I did my Christmas shopping at thwe mall, the retail mix tapes have been edited down to an uninspiring two or three songs.

Let’s start with the song most likely to get stuck in my head and stay there, like an unwelcome squatter, for three days. “All I Want for Christmas is You,” which I think is sung by Mariah Carey, was played in every one of the eight stores I visited. In several of the stores, the song was looped, playing over and over. This overkill chased me out of one place and made me think twice about walking into another.

Next up on the toxic hit parade is “Santa Baby,” which, when sung by Eartha Kitt, has something snarly and cool about it. But the version they’re playing in stores this year is by Ariana Grande. She’s a huge teen pop star, and I was shopping in a teen clothing store. But don’t they know that at this time of year the mothers are in there, and we are likely to be run off by this sort of song?

Completing the trio of obnoxious songs is “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” which, when performed by Natalie Cole and whatever male is joining the duet, is tolerable the first eight times I hear it each season. But the stores are piping other, lesser singers’ versions of it into the stores (maybe to entice me to buy a coat), and it makes me not want to buy anything. I think that this bad music accounts for the rise in shoppers turning to the internet and away from the malls.

Even the higher-end stores are using this same tape. It’s as if all the retailers get together every Halloween and decide on what three songs they will unleash upon their customers during November and December. Haven’t they heard of

Tchaikovsky? Some Vince Guaraldi? Even some old Andy Williams would be preferable to Ms. Grande.

But no. Spending those couple of hours in the mall made me feel like I was being assaulted by bad smells or was going through a paddle wheel. It is significant that after all that shopping, I didn’t buy a single thing.

As I type this, it’s two days later and I still have a line of that Mariah Carey song in my head. Until it goes away, I’ll substitute my own lyrics. All I want for Christmas is quiet.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.