I woke up this morning to Christmas Music. To many of you this may seem like a normal thing, considering the season we are in, but in Japan this is a little unusual. Department stores and convenience stores actually do tend to play Christmas music. I don't know if they subscribe to the same Muzak service that many US department stores use or what, but it is there. Regardless, outside of these stores it is not a common thing to hear at all.

Upon investigation, I narrowed it down to coming from a car parked across the street. Someone was sitting it it as it ran, listening to Christmas music loud enough that I could hear it. In Japan it's not unusual to see people sitting in their car while parked. You see this most often around lunch time as people eat in their car for whatever reason they have. While it's not as common to see this in residential areas, it's also not unusual. But in the morning? Also, outside of big cities, folks usually don't play their car music so loudly. How mysterious! I didn't, however, feel like walking over and asking what was going on, so the episode will remain a mystery.

Christmas music is a strange thing in the US. There are several old traditional Christian songs in circulation. Combined with these is a much larger playlist of 1940s-50s songs sung by the old crooners, probably while they were wearing fedoras and drinking scotch. Well, that's the image anyways. Or maybe that was just Sinatra, I can't be sure. At any rate, there might be one or two recent hits mixed in (Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas is You comes to mind), but mainly it's these hits from a couple generations ago.

It's an odd thing. The Baby Boomers, the children of the World War II vets, are often blamed for this and it's explained by saying they are holding on to this music from their childhoods. As adults they rejected this big band music as corny and they embraced rock and roll, but for Christmas time they want to return to their childhoods, so they crave the sentimental feeling of this old music. Or that's the theory anyway. I think in some ways this music has now also become that same sentimental music for my generation, Generation X, since it was constantly playing in our childhoods too, and so it sticks around. We may be stuck with it at this point, for better or for worse.

So I found myself sipping my green tea while listening to Christmas music. I don't really like Christmas music, mind you, but there seemed little else I could do. My kids were still sleeping so I wasn't going to put on my own music to block it out. You can picture me sitting at a low Japanese table under a blanket (called a kotatsu. These things are really great!), in a fairly Japanese room with tatami floor, sipping a glass of green tea while listening to some guy play Christmas music loudly from his car. Strange morning.

^{This is from a store advertisment, but mine doesn't look that different. They're warm! (there is a heater under the table)}

We are getting close to the big day. Again. It seems to roll around faster and faster every year. That's probably more me getting older, but I think it's also society pushing the holiday more and more every year. @bozz had a great post a few days ago that mentioned this topic as he talked about other things. I could say a lot on the topic, but my previous post in this series was abut Buddhism, so I'll stay away from the topic this time. Instead, how about one of my favorite quotes. I always think of this when thoughts of the passage of time come up.

Legolas stirred in his boat. 'Nay, time does not tarry ever,' he said; 'but change and growth is not in all things and places alike. For the Elves the world moves, and it moves both very swift and very slow. Swift, because they themselves change little, and all else fleets by: it is a grief to them. Slow, because they need not count the running years, not for themselves. The passing seasons are but ripples ever repeated in the long long stream. Yet beneath the Sun all things must wear to an end at lest.'

"The passing seasons are but ripples ever repeated". I love that. Tolkien was probably thinking of himself and of his small children when he wrote that passage. A lot of his personal beliefs and ideas are embedded in the book.

Back to the department store push, Charlie Brown complained 60 years ago that Christmas was becoming too commercialized, and I think that has only increased more and more every year. Even in Japan we start to see department stores making the Christmas push earlier and earlier. I kind of don't mind the department store push, though. That's capitalism for you, or the extreme variety we seem to be stuck in these days; stores have to make their money, after all. If this continues, we'll be celebrating Christmas starting before the leaves even change, and that's a little amusing to think about. I do wish they didn't always play the same old Christmas music, though.

...and I wonder why that guy across the street was playing it so loud and so early.

David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku.

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