The Reason I'm Having a Great Christmas Season

Usually, I'm driving my kids around to all of their various activities, driving myself to work, and driving myself to the store.  And usually, I tune the radio in the car to the Christmas station, starting the day after Thanksgiving.  I love Christmas music!  I'm in the car all the time, listening to Christmas music all the time.

Well, this year, I've been really enjoying the Christmas season.  More than usual.  I usually really hate it.  It's stressful and people hardly ever make Christmas what it's supposed to be about - a celebration of Christ's birth.  It's commercialized and just really horrible.  But this year, it's been smooth sailing.  I wondered if it's because of my hydrocodone, honestly.  Those pills make me happy.

But when Ben and I got in the car yesterday to go to dinner and a movie with my parents, sisters, and their hubbies,  I figured out exactly why my season has been more pleasant than usual.  Ben had the radio set to the Christmas music station.  And that's when I realized...

It's because I haven't been listening to Christmas music!!

Like I said, I love Christmas music!  But I think my problem is that I've been overloaded by Christmas music.  I listen to it for an entire month, all the time.  And I think it's just too much.  Not listening to Christmas music has been a very welcome thing for me this year. 

So I've decided, when I'm done with hydrocodone and good to drive again (and want to leave the house again, honestly - you would think that I ran an ultra marathon yesterday instead of going to dinner and a movie), I'm not going to tune the radio to the Christmas station until the week before Christmas.  Then I'll enjoy it.

And I think that's my plan for next year, too.  I think sometimes there is too much of a good thing.

Music affects me a lot, come to think of it.  I remember, when Ben and I were first married, we got permission to paint the living room of our first rental house.  We were painting and listening to Ben's favorite radio station, a buttrock station.  And as I was rolling this sage green color on the walls, and listening to this horrible, violent music, I was getting more and more angry at Ben.  I was just so MAD!  I finally realized that the music was affecting me. We switched to a jazz station, and immediately, I felt so much better!!

Ben's alarm on his iPad plays "Pink Moon" by Nick Drake every morning, and it makes my morning so much better than the beeping of my alarm clock.  It wakes me so kindly and so calmly.  Ahhh.  I love Nick Drake.

Music really does affect you.