RUSHING INTO THE FESTIVE SEASON.

Northern Star columnist Ally Formeller is not a fan of the Christmas songs she's hearing.

I just can’t stand Christmas music.

I used to work retail, and I still do during the winter months when I’m not at school. I’ve heard my fair share of holiday songs— rather, I’ve heard my fair share of the six holiday songs my store would play on loop until February.

Perhaps that's a consequence of what she's been hearing.

Mariah Carey’s classic Christmas song “All I Want For Christmas Is You” has nearly 950 million streams on Spotify, with millions of streams undoubtedly coming after the holiday season last year or from those who wanted to celebrate Christmas early this year. The song’s streaming numbers were just under 900 million by the end of the holiday season last year.

Michael Bublé’s “It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas” has just under 500 million Spotify streams.

These songs are ubiquitous with the holiday season; they’re everywhere. Especially working retail, it’s impossible to tune out these songs for an entire season.

Working retail did not start my disdain for holiday music; it just made my aversion to it stronger. Instead of hearing the smooth, fatherly voice of Bublé, or the impressive, powerful voice of Mariah Carey, I hear grating jingle bells and annoying lyrics.

Perhaps that's because she's being exposed to the "[m]ediocre and etiolated covers" of the traditional tunes, which make up a depressingly large share of what the seasonal cable or radio channels offer.  That "All I Want for Christmas is You" is representative of a recent plague of female pop singers using the festive season to lament their unrequited love, and Michael Bublé takes a lot of the hard words out of the songs he covers.

The current lyrics are annoying because they've been dumbed down.