My proposed remedy for bad Christmas music. Make January 3 your annual Trash Bad Xmas Music Bash!

I shop as little as possible, I don't watch TV, I work at home, I rarely go to parties, and the only regular exposure I get to broadcast media aside from the Internet is the NPR station in Honolulu that plays classical music. Therefore, on Solstice eve, it's fair to call me a relatively Christmas-naive citizen. Hell, I'm practically virginal.

So hubby and I got back earlier from running errands in Hilo on a warm and cloudless day. He had a short doctor's appointment, so I did paperwork in the lobby while waiting. Then I noticed the aggressive chill. I wonder if there are many places in the U.S. outside of Hawaii where one is likely to be assaulted by an air conditioner five days before Christmas. (Yes, I know, life's rough here.)

The blasts of music, however, were far more annoying than the frigid draft. Normally this office pipes lilting Hawaiiana into the waiting room, but not this month. The first selection, I am guessing, was supposed to be a soothing tune extolling the holiday's virtues in anthemic form a la Beach Boys. Yet the piano and Muzak-y strings couldn't distract from -- nay, they highlighted! -- the male quartet's inability to sing on key. The tonal drifting would have disabled a Manhattan snowplow. The singers strained to sound hushed but sounded merely strained -- the aural equivalent of a collapsed souffle. There was a pretty, tinkling piano riff at the end, in a descending pentatonic scale, but alas, it was too little too late.

The next selection featured a shrill children's chorus shrieking its way through "My Favorite Things." I had never thought of that as a Christmas song, but okay. I guess it's in that line about warm winter mittens, or maybe the one about packages tied up with strings. (Hmm, maybe I should just compose a "list song" saluting every major holiday and rack in the royalties all year long.) I glanced around -- no one else in the lobby seemed to be aware of the music, much less bothered by the children's mechanical, Munchkin-like intonation. By the fourth verse, however, I was straining to suppress maniacal fits of laughter. It seemed like a good time to escape to the restroom.

On returning to the lobby, I was pleasantly surprised. My ears were engulfed by a beautiful and rhythmic Hawaiian song performed by what sounded like a native choral group -- a vast improvement. The hyperactive air conditioning had also abated. It felt more like the lobby I remembered -- just like the one I used to know, if you will. Then I noticed the fake snowman in the corner wearing a surgeon-style mouth mask. Cute.

Why is so much heinous, God-awful music foisted on a hapless public in the name of Christmas? Clearly it is because that's the only way these banal, uninspiring groups can get a hearing. It's as if some evil choral director waves the magic Christmas baton over his group of tuneless gingerbread men, and all musical sins are forgiven. Still, are incessant references to clangorous bells, not to mention Jack Frost's nonconsensual goosing of my nasal cavities, supposed to atone for an utter lack of euphony? I don't get it.

And, of course, 'tis the season for giving and forgiving, so any expression of frayed sensibilities is written off as a measure of the bearer's Grinch factor (bah, humbug!), or at best, his lack of fortitude in the face of the annual Cheer-A-Thon. So the recipient of bad tidings can forgive the blasphemer and feel just a touch superior. But everyone hates bad Christmas music, right? By December 20, is anyone else still listening to this dross?

America has a long history of cultural intolerance. We burn books and rock 'n' roll records with impunity. Why not Christmas CDs? It's just useless clutter eleven months of the year, right? So keep one or two, if you must, and trash the rest. (In the name of Christ, though, show some mercy next holiday season by donning a set of headphones along with your gay apparel. One man's tasteful tinsel-tune is another man's treacle. Life is too short and beautiful to subject your neighbor to yet another round of wretched wassailing!)

I propose January 3 as the annual date for this joyous ceremony. It will give everyone an extra day to recover from the New Year's Eve hangover and the New Year's Day clearance sale, and otherwise put the house back in order. Plus, it will coincide with the anniversary of Alaska's achieving statehood, thus expressing solidarity with the most wintry of the fifty United States (which by now, I'm betting, is damned sick of its white Christmas).

In the spirit of the season, though, here's a brief Hawaiian lesson. You have probably heard the phrase "Mele Kalikimaka" (the Hawaiian phonetic transcription of English's "Merry Christmas"), but far fewer people know the phrase for Happy New Year: HAU'OLI MAKAHIKI HOU. (It sounds like, "how-O-ly, Mah-kah-HEE-kee, ho.")

So have a Hau'oli Makahiki Hou, and don't forget to take out that trash.