40 days and 40 nights

The date is November 16th, an entire 40 days before Christmas. To put that in perspective, Biblical references use "40 days and 40 nights" as synonymous with "a very, very long time". Why the significance, you might ask? Well, as it seems to happen earlier every year, today it happened again... WARM 106.9 started playing non-stop Christmas music. Truth be told, I wouldn't even had realized it until I stopped in at Subway on my way home from work and as I walk in the door, hear Andy Williams singing "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" and had to do an auditory double-take. [Don't ask me how that works, by the way.]

Avid readers of my blog will recall prior references to my long-standing rule regarding holiday music. I am, of course, a huge fan of Christmas music of all types, but have instituted a rule (which admittedly, like the Pirates' Code is more a guideline than an actual rule) that I shall not intentionally listen to Christmas music until Thanksgiving. This was officially amended in 2004 to allow anytime starting the week of Thanksgiving. So in actuality, even according to my guidelines, as soon as Sunday it would be acceptable. But still... I think it's the fact that Thanksgiving this year is so early that it just seems too early for the holiday season to be here already. The whole point of the rule is simply to make sure that I'm not completely sick of Christmas music by the time December 25th actually arrives.

I guess you can't change it. By Monday I'll have the Christmas music ready to play on the radio, and my all-star collection of holiday music cascading from the headphones of my MP3 player.

At least I still have 39 days to start my Christmas shopping.