{"id":586,"date":"2007-12-11T18:37:06","date_gmt":"2007-12-12T02:37:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/12\/11\/why-christmas-sux\/"},"modified":"2013-02-07T18:24:42","modified_gmt":"2013-02-08T02:24:42","slug":"why-christmas-sux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/12\/11\/why-christmas-sux\/","title":{"rendered":"why christmas sux"},"content":{"rendered":"

A great aside from Bill Eddins<\/a>, who I now really want to come conduct here in Portland, if only to have drinks with him after a concert.<\/p>\n

This leads to another rant – I hate Christmas. I have two reasons for this: I particularly dislike the rampant materialism that is now part of this holiday. I’m sick of BUY! BUY! BUY! There’s another reason though – I can’t stand the incessant Christmas music. I only have to hear the first 3 notes of Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer<\/em> to have that damn song stuck in my head for hours on end, and this is only one of a thousand Christmas songs that one cannot avoid hearing during this month. Malls, radio, whatever – you simply cannot avoid them. It’s this time of year that I keep threatening to move to a predominantly Muslim country. Of course, that has it’s own issues.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A great aside from Bill Eddins, who I now really want to come conduct here in Portland, if only to have drinks with him after a concert. This leads to another rant – I hate Christmas. I have two reasons for this: I particularly dislike the rampant materialism that is now part of this holiday. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[143,115],"tags":[3669,3662],"class_list":["post-586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous","category-music","tag-music","tag-portland"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8kC-9s","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1554,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/12\/17\/christmas-break-is-approaching\/","url_meta":{"origin":586,"position":0},"title":"christmas break is approaching","author":"Charles Noble","date":"December 17, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"...and it couldn't have come any sooner!\u00c2\u00a0 I am definitely feeling the drain of all the stuff that comes along with the holiday season: winter weather (especially taxing here in snow-stoopid Portland), shopping madness, one holiday program after the other (with the same tunes arranged endless ways), and the onslaught\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "miscellaneous"","block_context":{"text":"miscellaneous","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/miscellaneous\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"morning snow","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/img_1267-400x600.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1626,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/12\/22\/winter-is-here\/","url_meta":{"origin":586,"position":1},"title":"winter is here","author":"Charles Noble","date":"December 22, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"photo: \u00c2\u00a9 charles noble Yes, the ice and snow continued all through Saturday night, and we might get a bit of relief from the precipitation on Monday, but who knows?\u00c2\u00a0 Hope your holiday travel plans all work out - we're waiting to see if driving to the Seattle area will\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "chamber music"","block_context":{"text":"chamber music","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/chamber-music\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"3126264156_07dc9bd6ae_b","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/3126264156_07dc9bd6ae_b-400x599.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3681,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2009\/12\/27\/input-needed\/","url_meta":{"origin":586,"position":2},"title":"input needed","author":"Charles Noble","date":"December 27, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Hi all! \u00a0Hope you had a great holiday weekend (ok, Christmas weekend, Bill O'Reilly!). \u00a0I've been asked to write a guest blog post for the Portland Youth Philharmonic's website, and my query is for my fellow professional musicians. \u00a0I'm cooking up a list of things that I know now that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "bloggers"","block_context":{"text":"bloggers","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/bloggers\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":470,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/10\/06\/marthas-obituary\/","url_meta":{"origin":586,"position":3},"title":"martha’s obituary","author":"Charles Noble","date":"October 6, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Courtesy of Niel Deponte, OSO principal percussionist Martha Herby, 1951 - 2007 by Niel dePonte, Principal Percussion, Oregon Symphony Martha Herby, 55, became the Second Flutist of the Oregon Symphony in 1981 and also served as the Acting Principal Flute of the symphony on many occasions. She was a graduate\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "the orchestra world"","block_context":{"text":"the orchestra world","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/the-orchestra-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":25215,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2025\/12\/04\/caroline-shaw-and-the-spirit-of-christmas\/","url_meta":{"origin":586,"position":4},"title":"caroline shaw and the spirit of christmas","author":"Charles Noble","date":"December 4, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"I attended an amazing concert here in Portland last night. It was Trio Medi\u00e6val1 with Caroline Shaw and Danni Lee Parpan. It was much of the trio's recent holiday album sung live with Shaw and Parpan providing folksong adjacent atmospheric accompaniments.2 Trio Medi\u00e6val. Photo: \u00c5sa Maria Mikkelsen First of all,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "chamber music"","block_context":{"text":"chamber music","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/chamber-music\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Trio-Mediavel-2-1.webp?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Trio-Mediavel-2-1.webp?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Trio-Mediavel-2-1.webp?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Trio-Mediavel-2-1.webp?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2006\/01\/01\/a-busy-week\/","url_meta":{"origin":586,"position":5},"title":"a busy week…","author":"Charles Noble","date":"January 1, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"(Photo by Viv) For most musicians, the week between Christmas and New Year's Day is pretty uneventful. For me, however, it was quite a bit busier than usual the last couple years. Last year I went down to Los Angeles to play as a member of the Harvy Rosencrantz Orchestra,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "the orchestra world"","block_context":{"text":"the orchestra world","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/the-orchestra-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"pink in seattle 12-28-05","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/01\/78832246_a3b581fe8b_b.thumbnail.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}