A Different View with Dave O’Connell

As someone you thinks that the height of multi-tasking is walking and talking at the same time, I would find it next to impossible to work in a room with background music playing or the radio on in the first place.

But what would lift that to an even higher plane would be the notion of Christmas songs as the backdrop to your working day.

And yet that’s the reality as the radio stations brace themselves like greyhounds in traps to spring forward with the first ‘Yuletide classic’ as soon as there’s a brr in the month.

They might think it fills everyone with that sense of anticipation of gathering around the fire, beside the tree, pulling crackers and eating plum puddings. It doesn’t; for some of us it just fills us with a sense of foreboding.

There are a couple of reasons for this; firstly I’m not the biggest fan of Christmas in the first place, and for as far as it goes, I’m also old school. And that means Christmas doesn’t begin in November.

I don’t dislike Christmas itself; it’s just all it’s come to stand for – and starting ‘the festive season’ before the ghouls are back in their box from Halloween is off the scale.

Secondly, there are some great Christmas songs but there are some truly awful ones as well – and they seem to get more of the airtime. I could listen to Fairytale of New York at any time of the year, and Slade’s I Wish It Could Be Christmas also makes the cut.

I love Johnny Duhan’s Your Sure Hands and LCD Soundsystem’s Christmas Will Break Your Heart and Joni Mitchell’s River; I can ever get nostalgic about Chris Rea’s Driving Home for Christmas.

So I’m not completely immune to the charms of festive songs.

But if I never heard Mariah Carey again, life would be no less fulfilling – and you can throw Shakin’ Stevens, Wham, Ariana Grande and Katy Perry into that same pile for starters.