One of the radios I remember was quite large and stood on legs. I recall lying on the floor and resting my feet on the frame as I listened to the Lone Ranger, The Shadow, Captain Midnight or Bulldog Drummund: Tracer of Lost Persons.
The pictures were always vivid and I had no trouble seeing the one-dimensional action play out on the screen in my mind. No question - radio was the theater of the mind. And possibly still is.
Now, in the 21st century, radio exists only in my car. I am hardly aware of it unless someone I am not related to accidentally moves the dial to a station Limbaugh is on, or, not quite equally chilling, until the day after Thanksgiving!
The calendar is still reading November and I find we have wall-to-wall, 24-hour-a day, non-stop Christmas songs ringing out across the ether. Was it always thus, and I've been unconscious? Or perhaps I just will myself to have amnesia once a year.
It's bad enough to have a whole month of listening to sappy lyrics like You Better Watch Out and Frosty the Snowman, but hearing Oh Holy Night and The First Noel in daytime traffic seems as though someone should complain about the sacrilegious aspects of using the baby Jesus, innocent angels and the unlikely virgin Mary for subliminal prodding to shop, shop, shop.
It would seem to my age-created caustically critical soul a better use of the predictable Christian bitching about people saying "Happy Holidays" rather than "Merry Christmas" if they would instead object to this manifestly avaricious use of "holy" music to help line the pockets of the commerce-driven.
But I shouldn't quibble. Anything these soldiers of god do would irritate me. This is just one of the pleasures of being an atheist.
Incidentally, my favorite Christmas "carol" is: Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer. What are the chances?
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