If you’ve known me for any length of time, you know of my absolute aversion to Andy Williams’ holiday classic song “It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year.” What you might not know, however, is the story of why I break out in hives at the first notes of the song.
In 1996, I was working as a part-time on-air jock for KDMX (MIX) 102.9 fm in Dallas. When it comes to the holidays, the part-timers get a little happier, because it means more air time when the full-time jocks go on vacation. However, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were not very exciting that year — MIX was playing a satellite feed of traditional Christmas music, and anyone driving the board through the holiday was only there to make sure the local commercials would get played.
As the low-man on the totem pole, I picked up the shift on Christmas Eve — 6:00 pm to Midnight. My fiancee and her family were planning their normal party, where they would open presents at the stroke of Midnight, and my fiancee wasn’t too happy to hear I had drawn this stick. They were all really supportive, though, and said they would hold off opening gifts until I had time to haul ass back to the house.
The marathon was ridiculously boring. All choral arrangements, with nothing released later than 1968, it seemed. I don’t remember if that included that racy ditty from Alvin & The Chipmunks or not. Might have been too low-brow for the programmer. Additionally, the top of the hour, after the legal ID, they programmed the evergreen “It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year.”
This is a good time to note that I really like Christmas music. Maybe it’s a side-effect of growing up in Texas, where the prospect of a white Christmas is only bolstered by climate change. Christmas music will do what the 70-degree temperatures attempt to thwart: get me in a festive mood. However, I’m much more fond of modern holiday versions and original songs than the “classics.” My grandmother had a ten-LP box set of Christmas music that was on constant rotation in December, and I got more than a belly-full of Perry Como, Bing Crosby, and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in my youth. When the first Very Special Christmas album came out, I was gleeful — Christmas music for me, and not my grandparents.
By the third hour, I had written a whole new set of lyrics for the damned song. They are not suitable for polite discussion.
By the fifth hour, I abandoned the parody version, and was singing the song in the voice of Muppet drummer Animal.
By the sixth hour, my singalong had been replaced by a low growl. At least I was comforted in the knowledge that I was leaving in less than an hour, and heading to my own little Christmas oasis.
…except Midnight came and went, and my relief did not show. By 12:15, my annoyance inflated to palpable anger. The guy didn’t answer his phone, or his pager (it was 1996 — don’t judge us). My Program Director was on vacation in New York, and her next-in-command was hosting her own family at her home.
I was trapped. Even worse, I was hungry. The snack machines were empty. The station’s fridge had been cleaned out. No one was delivering anything. Additionally, going to the closest convenience store would mean I would miss a commercial break, and dead air was simply not an option. So, I toughed it out. My fiancee groused, but there wasn’t anything we could do but shrug and move along.
This meant another six hours of this ridiculously morose mix of music. I couldn’t really escape the onslaught, because I needed to hear if anything happened to the feed, and whenever they would go to commercial break. Walking around in the hallways was no respite, either, as the station’s feed piped through the floor in speakers. I was surrounded.
And, at the top of every hour, there was Andy Williams. Ready to pound it into my head that this was, in fact, the most wonderful time of the year, under penalty of death.
In my half-delirium, I was only partially surprised when 6:00 am rolled around, and THAT PERSON also did not show. Turns out that DJ had told the scheduler they were going out of state — or, at least, that was their excuse when he was fired.
This was only a four-hour shift, thankfully. Mercifully. So, when 9:50 am rolled around and the scheduled board op showed up, they were greeted by some lunatic who couldn’t stop cackling in gratitude. Me. I ran them through a highly abridged version of what happened, and made damned sure I was in the elevators and out of earshot of the station when the top of the hour, lest Andy Williams assault my brain for a seventeenth straight hour.
I got home, kissed my fiancee, and fell into a Christmas stupor. Didn’t wake up until Boxing Day, when I was treated to an abridged gift exchange. My fiancee’s family held back one gift, and jovially opened them with us that morning.
When I returned to work two days later, the tale of my marooned plight had spread through the entire station. My mail drop was filled with gift cards and goodies, along with a letter from the VP of Programming, my PD and APD, thanking me for “taking ten for the team.”
For a decade afterward, any time I would hear “It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year,” I would either shudder uncontrollably or break out in hives. It finally took my current wife (things didn’t work with the woman I was engaged to at that time, and no, it had nothing to do with Christmas music) making a game out of quickly identifying Christmas music we didn’t like on the radio, and how fast we could punch out from the station.
Flash-forward to 2015. We’re three weekends into the official “Christmas music season,” which starts (rightfully) on Thanksgiving night. Neither Manda nor I listen to Christmas music much, but on the weekends while we’re running errands or cleaning house, it makes for a good audio background. That said, neither of us have heard Andy Williams once. At all. Plenty of the songs she isn’t fond of (I’ll let her detail them if she chooses) have made multiple appearances, but the Zombie Christmas Ninja has yet to show up. I think I may actually look forward to hearing it, for once.
Just not sixteen times in as many hours.
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