the most wonderful time of the year

i admit it, i'm a sucker for christmas carols.

my dad probably owns more christmas music on vinyl than any other type of music and i grew up listening to it at full blast every weekend in december ever since i can remember. he would record hours of christmas-music-only radio onto cassette tapes and label them 'CHRISTMAS' with a little stick-figure tree.

so when i went away to college, i made sure to bring along a couple tapes so i could sing along with Nat King Cole or Karen Carpenter when the season rolled around. I wasn't, however, prepared for my roommate's reaction. now let me start by saying i was lucky to be placed with this girl. she's one of the most kind and thoughtful people i know, but she won't lie and doesn't hesitate to say what's on her mind.

'ugh. I HATE this crap,' was what she probably said when she heard those tapes the first time. i totally thought she was kidding. i mean, c'mon! who doesn't love 'holly jolly christmas,' or 'here come santa claus'?! but no, she really couldn't stand it. but i still played them a bit and tried to ignore her rolling eyes. after awhile, it became a joke and i'd threaten to play them to wake her up. she said she was glad to be rid of my 'damn christmas crap' when we were packing up to go home for winter break. i just shrugged it off.

the next fall, we moved into a dorm room a floor above our old one. when the holiday season was approaching, i went searching through all my stuff for my dad's good old christmas tapes. i could have sworn i had brought them, but let me tell you, there aren't too many hiding places in a single room shared by two people. so i resigned myself to spending that winter humming snippets of 'reindeer on the roof' or 'good king wenceslas,' awfully surprised my roommate wasn't telling me to shut up. i was sad. i thought i lost my tapes. at that time there was no 24-hour christmas station either and i only got to hear 'rockin' around the christmas tree' when i watched 'Home Alone.' it just wasn't the same.

when we were getting ready to move out at the end of the year, i had pulled the bed away from the wall to get some of the stuff that had fallen behind it. i heard something being tossed onto the bed.

'i know. i'm a bitch,' my roommate said.

and there they were; two cassette tapes with little stick christmas trees, that she had stolen while we were moving in and hidden. an act, she claimed, intended to preserve her sanity.