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This month is a bit of a creative "dead" time, it seems.

If you haven't noticed, it's nearly Christmas, and that means several good things and one very bad thing. I love cookies, presents, cooler weather, spending time with family and all that great stuff, but this season also means it's the time for the inundation of atrociously cheesy celebrity Christmas albums.

Most recent on the list, Jessica Simpson delivered some holiday cheer with Re-Joyce. The title alone is cringe-inducing; I can hardly wait to see what mindless holiday tidings of joy Simpson and her crack team of pop songwriters have come up with. While researching this article, I also came across Clay Aiken's Merry Christmas With Love. My friends made many sarcastic cracks, insert your own joke here.

Christmas music should be left alone. Say you're a musician, and because you want to profit off the December buying frenzy, you make a holiday album.

The choices you're presented are dangerous: 1) either record your interpretation of the same songs we've heard a thousand times, which were probably better versions, and induce the here we go again reaction, or worse 2) write new music and induce everyone's gag reflex. The continuing commercialization of Christmas has resulted in some kind of over-perfected, pre-packaged idea of the holiday that doesn't exist anywhere. It just adds to the stress of an already taxing time of the year to listen to fake warm-and fuzzies.

I believe I'm in a position to complain about this problem for one reason: "muzak." N'Sync Christmas, Elvis Christmas, Jackson Five Christmas -- I'm familiar with these and many more. After working retail last Christmas, and likely to return to the same job over this break, I have been exposed to the worst of the worst. Lyrics to new Christmas "classics" like "when you love someone, it's Christmas everyday" don't help to make up for the fact that snow doesn't fall on the beaches of Corpus Christi.

Although rare pearls come around every now and then, like No Doubt's cover of The Vandal's "Joy to the World," most innovations in the Christmas genre come across as excessively trite, cheesy and the example of the worst things our American Christmas culture has become. Maybe modern musicians should just leave Christmas albums alone and let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

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