The Lie: You learned that Christmas carol in school today? I’d love to hear it.

The Truth: I’d love to never hear it again. It’s been playing on a virtual loop in stores and on the radio, alongside a handful of other regrettable anthems, for the last four weeks. There are literally hundreds of viable Christmas songs – why are there only fifteen or twenty that ever receive any airplay, and why are they invariably the stupidest ones? If I’m subjected to the inanity of “Jingle Bell Rock” one more time, I swear I’ll never mix and mingle with anyone ever again. In what universe are we supposed to accept that there’s actually a place called “Jingle Bell Square?” Imagine how bizarre that label would seem the other eleven months of the year. “Hey man, come to my Fourth of July barbecue. It’s in Jingle Bell Square.” I don’t think so.

Sadly, if there’s one thing that never fails to upgrade an uninspired yuletide anthem from merely annoying to fully intolerable, it’s the decision by my five-year-old son to sing it at me. He makes the vocalist of “I’m Gettin’ Nuttin’ For Christmas” sound like Placido Domingo.