Ho ho. Christmas is happening again!

Now that Halloweenie is over, we have just a month and then some before Christmas hits. With this comes gift buying, mall sales, mall Santas—you know the drill. But this isn't an analysis of Christmas culture. It's an analysis of a specific thing that has piqued my interest for a long, long time.

I live in a bustling market, and so it's not uncommon to see people with tiny Chinese-made Bluetooth speakers that speak "De Bluetoof devishe is reddy to pear" or "De Bluetoof devaysh is connected uh suckcesfulae" every time they're powered on. Typically, they'd play budots—our own homegrown spin on EDM—or, during the Christmas season, a very particular Christmas tune.

Sometimes, when you walk along a stall, you may hear the familiar tune of Best Non Stop Christmas Tune Medley 2024 🎄🎁 Greatest Old Christmas Songs Medley 2024 ☃️, or, as I like to put it, The Christmas Medley. It cannot be understated that this is THE quintessential Christmas song in my country—you will hear the Medley everywhere you go. If you want to, you can listen to the song right here.

The Medley itself is nothing particularly special—it's simply a two-hour-long piece of music that consists of a bunch of Christmas songs like "Jingle Rock" and all that kind of stuff, with the songs and instrumentation transitioning into one another. It's not called Non Stop Christmas Tune Medley for no reason. But I say it's nothing special because, frankly, it's probably my least favorite piece of music.

The Medley is characterized by extremely cheap-sounding organs, a very bland drum loop, and just cheap-sounding instrumentation in general. I'm unfortunately not a musicologist or whatever, so I can't elaborate further on why the music sucks—musically—but I've attached a YouTube link down below, so you can go take a listen for yourself.

What I can definitely say, though, is that the song doesn't seem to have as much dynamic range as more cromulently produced Christmas music—say, a Pentatonix song or, I dunno, Michael Bublé? Even the other quintessential Filipino Christmas song—that one song by Jose Mari Chan—has more dynamic range than the Medley. It's like the Medley doesn't have much depth in its instrumentation. Or something.

Let's break down the Christmas Medley further. It seems to be set in some sort of gaudy faux-disco type genre, and underscoring it is a pair of two vocalists—one female, another male. The entire medley is continuous, with a very basic beat—there are no build-ups or breaks—the entire song just goes on and on, so it can't really be classified as a DJ set. The entire track can simply be described as cheap and gaudy. Which is weird.

Why do people listen to this when you can just pull up much better Christmas music online? I'm assuming people play this set only because it's a continuous, uninterrupted two-hour track, meaning it's precisely perfect for retail workers who just want a set-and-forget solution for their store's music. Maybe that's the reason the Medley is so popular. I guess it's just convenient...

One other thing I've noticed: on all the music uploads I've seen of this medley, they all seem to not credit the original artist for whatever reason. The thing is, I don't know the real official name of the Medley. None of the uploads of this song credit the artists or vocalists. There's nothing in the description that could potentially give away its original source! This track is much like a lost wave track in the sense that any and all metadata about it is unknown. My theory for this track's origin is that it's most likely from a very cheap CD that you'd find in cheap bazaars. Or something. I don't even know what this song is. It's mysterious.

So that's the Untraceable Christmas Song. It's a big doozy. It's strange. Bizarre. And gaudy.