on both metal and holiday (xmas) music

Yes, I will in one single post discuss my feelings on both metal music and those timeless songs we all know as Christmas music.

First I will freely admit to a near loathing of most Christmas/holiday music. In some instances, the overt religiousness of the songs is just wearing thin over time. In other instances it's just that the songs mostly suck long and hard. As with any genre/style of music, I will happily acknowledge those rare songs that actually do not suck.

My feelings about heavy metal are not quite as strong. I can easily avoid hearing metal for the most part, and if the singer isn't doing that stupid growly thing, I can nearly enjoy it when I can't avoid hearing it. As mentioned above, there are of course those bands, Black Sabbath before Ozzy left, that made amazing music. What I've heard lately calling itself metal does seem mostly to suck, but that's not where I'm going with this.

This post is all thanks to Chris and his posting of the link to Twisted Sister at Myspace. They've got four Christmas songs up that are worth a listen if you don't think Satan will come out of the metal and rape your soul. Growing up Baptist enough will do that sort of thing to you and make you think some fairly crazy shit.

Momma and I, mostly through Momma's efforts, have amassed a small collection of Christmas music that we can both enjoy. She's had a similar aversion to Christmas music, though hers seems more stylistic in that she's as tired as I am of the same old songs being trotted out each year. Christmas music gets mighty pervasive, a situation I dread anew each year. But I know that we have our stash, and when it gets too much, and I actually feel like hearing Christmas music, I can retreat to the safety of that stash.

Certainly this discussion begs the question, as an atheist, what am I actually celebrating at Christmas? I don't believe the baby-saviour-king story, and I don't especially care for winter itself, so religiously and solsticely, it's a pretty pointless holiday for me. I'm not even going to pretend I think world peace is attainable given the human track record for not settling problems sensibly, so that whole plea-for-peace aspect of Christmas is mostly annoying because no one ever really means it in the end. In the end, I think Christmas causes just as much despair as joy.

But I find that regardless of my true nature, I almost somehow every year seem to enjoy Christmas, debt be damned, and I tend to blame it on the kids. Metal? I don't entirely not like it, but I also don't really like it. In the end, Christmas and metal in general just don't seem made for me.

I considered briefly adding a link that would indicate the sort of warping discourse I was given considering the evils of metal in my youth. Many people remember metal from the '80's as part of their personal history. I remember metal as a slide show in a dark church auditorium, and I was then scared of those two kids I knew that actually listened to metal. Once I got into googling the different ways of phrasing that would get what I was looking for, I decided that I would neither relive nor offer to others that particular slice of my history. Google it yourself.