Philly Needs an All-Chanukah Radio Station

Enough with your damn "Jingle Bells."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s5GY2NY2wY

What does Philadelphia radio have against the Jews?

For years, we Christ Killers have been subjected to non-stop Christmas music, beginning before Thanksgiving and continuing through December 25th. If that’s not tedious enough, it feels like it starts earlier every season. Hell, why not Labor Day?

“You can always switch stations, Shoshanna,” I can hear you thinking. Of course I can, Mary, but there is a larger issue in play: Where is the 24-hour-a-day Chanukah music?

I, for one, would love to hear such holiday classics as “I Have a Little Dreidel” and “Chanukah, Oh Chanukah” played on an endless loop. In Hebrew. And not just for eight days, either, but for six weeks before the first candle on the Menorah is lit.

Chanukah songs are highly underrated, BTW. “Lots of Latkes,” for example, is every bit as hand-clappingly festive as “Jingle Bells.”

Given that Chanukah fell on Thanksgiving this year, the auditory overload would begin, say, on the first day of school – a nice way to combine two festive occasions. The kick off date would change every year, of course, just as the holiday does.

Before you hurl accusations of prejudice, know this: I have nothing against “the Christmas kids,” as my daughter described them when she was about six. Some of my best friends are Christmas kids.

What annoys me is that they have so many choices, radio-wise, and I have none. We’re not exactly living in Kabul, after all. The greater Philadelphia metro area has the fifth-highest Jewish population in the country, according to recent surveys. Some of them run radio stations.

For all I know, they might run my two favorite radio stations, both of which are decking their halls with wall-to-wall Christmas tunes. Replacing them with other presets is no small task for this technophobe. Post-Christmas, I am forced to repeat the process.

Think about it – For more than 10 percent of the year, I can’t listen to my stations of choice because their playlists have morphed into an endless rendition of “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” It is a ho-ho-horrible situation.

Which is why I propose that the favor should be returned via a new format I like to call All-Maccabee-All-The-Time. Let the gentiles feel what it’s like to be shunned by the radio outlets they know and love.

Better yet, let them tune into their favorite stations, out of habit, and be waterboarded by music they don’t care about for a holiday they don’t celebrate. Three cheers for the City of Brotherly Love. Bah humbug this.

It might be prudent to mention here that loads o’ radio listeners in this town, my wife among them, are nutty for Christmas tunes. One chorus of “White Christmas” and they’re in their happy place. That’s why more stations are joining the parade. And why the parade keeps getting longer. The sucker generates beaucoup gelt.

Why not give the Maccabees a shot?, I say. Start with eight days and wait for a miracle.

It’s happened before.