As per our family custom, I had a (late) Christmas lunch with my mom's family, and Christmas dinner with my dad's. However, this year my dad's cousin was visiting from out of town, so my parents and sister decided to forego lunch at the Muramatsu's, and spend the entire day with the Hayashis.
With both my parents going to La Palma, it was incumbent on me to drive Grandma Lou to Brentwood for Christmas. Aware of my grandmother's affinity for country music, I set the radio to 93.9, KZLA.
I'm as fond as (probably more fond than) the next guy of an unseasonal Christmas carol; it's not uncommon for me to hum "Silver Bells" well into March; sometimes mid-summer I just can't get "It's Beginning to Look alot like Christmas" out of my head. Despite my predilection for these songs, I can't stand the deluge of holiday songs inundating the airwaves prior to December 25. To my dismay, the program director at KZLA decided that this year only Christmas songs would make the playlist beginning the week before Thanksgiving. [I hope said program director realized his mistake when, two weeks into this little experiment, he ran out of songs that fit comfortably into both the "country" and "Christmas" categories. Forced to abandon either the "country" or the "Christmas" requirement, apparently he found it wiser to embrace the latter: I tuned in one day and heard a Norteño-fied melody, heavy on the accordion.]
But for Christmas Day, it was back to safe, holiday classics, and what more appropriate song for this occation than...you guessed it: "Grandma got run over by a Reindeer." Listening to the lyrics with Grandma Lou next to me in the passanger seat made me feel a little...uneasy. Was the message a little too irreverent? With Grandma Lou well into her 80s, was the song too prescient? Whatever it was, I ignored my scruples and let the song play. Grandma Lou is a little hard of hearing, and she didn't seem to be listening to the radio anyway.
Grandma's hearing impairment and inattention notwithstanding, I had to take action when insinuations of public intoxication ("She'd been drinkin' too much egg nog,/ And we'd begged her not to go/ But she'd left her medication,/ So she stumbled out the door into the snow.") percolated through my car speakers. The thought of an inebriated, under-medicated matriarch overcome by an overzealous caribou just didn't seem worth it; the radio was heard from no more for the duration of our journey. Safely insulated from such vile, vicious imagery, we arrived cheerfully at our destination and alighted from the Prius.
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