The Jingle That Moved Into My Skull [Wreath]
It started in the grocery store aisle between canned yams and discount batteries, that cursed four-note hook sliding out of a ceiling speaker that has seen more holidays than any of us deserve,
Just a chirpy little melody for peppermint-flavored something, riding on handclaps and fake sleigh bells, catchy enough that every neuron in my head turned, “Yes, we will serve.”I rolled my cart past the end-cap of aggressively smiling snowmen and bulk candy canes, told myself it was nothing, just background noise in a fluorescent December haze,
But somewhere between “buy one, get one” and the frozen pie section, those four notes uncoiled like a bright red snake, wrapped around my thoughts, and refused to fade.
I made it home, dumped the groceries on the counter, tried to hum something cooler as a counterspell, some old rock riff with teeth and regret and actual bass,
Yet under every chord I strummed on the kitchen table with my fingers, that stupid jingle slipped in, peeking out like a kid in an ugly sweater making faces.
I chopped onions in time with the beat, cursed when my knife started tapping out the rhythm on the cutting board, each cut landing exactly on the same damned count of four,
By the time the oven preheated, I was stirring in sync with the ad, like some dead-eyed extra in my own life’s commercial, wondering when I agreed to sell my soul in-store.
It followed me to bed that night, humming under the white noise machine like a gremlin under the dresser chewing on wires and sanity,
Every time I shifted on the mattress, the springs squeaked in perfect tempo, turning my insomnia into a holiday radio station nobody asked for, a one-song marathon with zero humanity.
I tried counting sheep, then snowmen, then shot glasses lined up on an imaginary bar, anything to drown that jingle out with static,
Yet every count landed right on the chorus, the words I’d heard once now crisp and flawless in my mind, each line bright plastic, emphatic.
The next morning, my toothbrush vibrated in rhythm, the electric hum hitting those notes like it had been secretly hired by the marketing team,
Even the plumbing got in on it; the pipes groaned on the downbeat, the radiator hissed the melody, my showerhead added harmony with steam.
I stepped onto the street and found the world synced up like it had been waiting for my personal soundtrack,
Car tires shushed over slush in time, crosswalk signs blinked with the hook, even the pigeons on the lamp post bobbed their heads like they were in on the act.
At work, the office was a crime scene of forced cheer—tinsel strangling monitors, a sad little fake tree shedding plastic needles in the break room, stale cookies on a tray,
Somebody had left the radio on low, but it didn’t matter; the jingle inside my skull was louder than any station, chewing through my concentration, rewiring my day.
Every email subject line read like a twisted verse of the song, every spreadsheet row marched in columns of four,
I answered the phone with the tagline once, purely by accident, and the client thought it was hilarious; I wanted to put my head through the floor.
By midweek it had evolved from soundtrack to tenant, dragging furniture around in my mind, redecorating my internal monologue in candy cane stripes and marketing copy,
It whispered its lyrics into every silence, filled gaps in conversations, turned my sighs into hooks, my headaches into chorus stomps, relentless and sloppy.
Even my dirty thoughts weren’t safe—one night I tried to distract myself with sex and skin and hands and heat,
Only to find my hips accidentally moving to that jolly beat, which is not the rhythm you want when you’re aiming for something intimate and discreet.
“Hold up,” they laughed, breathless, hair in their eyes, “are you seriously timing this to a commercial?”I lied, blamed an imagined drum loop in my head, pretended I hadn’t just mentally replaced every moan with the brand name in full.
My body wanted sin, my brain wanted a catchy tagline; it was like trying to make out in front of a store demo TV blaring infomercials for knives,
And somewhere deep down, a little part of me wondered if this is how humanity ends—not with war or fire, but with jingles colonizing our lives.
The jingle knew my weak spots, too; it slid into old memories, reskinned them with sleigh bells and applause,
Rebranded childhood winters, rewrote the sound of my mother’s off-key carols into pitch-perfect harmonies with a trademark clause.
An argument from five years ago gained a canned chorus bop behind it,
A breakup scene replayed in my head with snowflakes falling on cue and a logo in the bottom corner, lit.
Every regret came with a limited-time offer, every ache with a cheerful line about “making the season bright,”It grafted sales onto sorrow until I couldn’t tell whether I was grieving or being gently upsold under twinkle lights.
One night, half-mad and half-amused, I tried to fight back by writing my own lyrics to it,
Sat at the kitchen table, pen gnawing my lip, turning that syrupy melody into a roast, bit by bit.
I kept the skeleton—those same four sticky notes—but swapped out every line for something truer and meaner,
Sang about insomnia and debt and pretending to love gatherings with relatives whose names get thinner and thinner.
Somewhere around verse three I started laughing, the kind of laugh that lives right beside tears,
Because it hit me that I had accepted the beat as permanent, I was just tweaking the words to fit my fears.
Out on my block, the decorations synced themselves to the internal beat without warning, or maybe I was just noticing the overlap now,
The neighbor’s blinking reindeer lights hit the downbeat, the inflatable Santa wobbled in slow motion, taking a bow.
Even the traffic felt choreographed—horns honking in call-and-response, sirens wailing harmonies as they cut through the crowd,
The city turned into a music video for a product I didn’t remember buying, all of us extras paid in loyalty points and the permission to be loud.
In dreams, the jingle grew teeth and personality, turned into a character in a stupid hat and snowflake tie,
A slick little bard with eyes made of glittering QR codes, leaning against the fridge in my subconscious, singing every time I wanted to cry.
He carried mistletoe like a weapon, used it to drag strangers together under fluorescent heaven,
Winked at the camera in my brain, saying, “Emotional vulnerability pairs well with our seasonal offer, three for seven.”I should have been terrified, and I was, a bit, but there was humor in it too—Who knew my personal demon would come pre-packaged with a jingle and a seasonal SKU.
The worst part? Other people had their own jingles, whole choirs of them,
On the subway, I could almost hear the different hooks buzzing in skulls, overlapping like bees fighting in one hive’s stem.
A woman tapping her foot to a retail anthem about snow and diamonds,
A kid mouthing words to a cartoon cereal song with the devotion of old-time hymns.
We were all walking down the same November–December corridor with separate tracks on loop,
Trying to remember our grocery lists and overdue conversations while corporate earworms made soup out of our group.
One morning, after weeks of living as a half-chewed host organism, I woke up and something was different: silence,
Not total, not holy, just the ordinary hum of a city outside and my own pulse in my ears, no manufactured jingling violence.
I lay there afraid to move, like any shift might trigger the sound again, like a motion sensor for ads had been installed in my spine,
But nothing came; the space in my head felt strangely open, like a room after a party, confetti on the floor, empties on the counter, stress declining.
I made coffee in off-beat peace, listened to the spoon click against the mug without overlay,
Walked to work with no mental chorus about savings or sparkle or special holiday.
It should have felt like a cure, and part of it did—my shoulders dropped, my jaw unclenched,
Yet there was also this faint, absurd emptiness, like missing a tooth your tongue keeps looking for, fingers still clenching like a fist, unquenched.
Because the truth is, the jingle had been something to wrestle, a ridiculous villain that distracted from deeper monsters I didn’t want to face,
While I complained about my brain being colonized by a chorus, I didn’t have to look at the actual grief sitting quietly in the corner, taking up space.
Without the noise, I heard other things: the scrape of loneliness at three in the morning, the hollow knock of plans that never got built,
The weird ache of wanting something soft and warm in a season that sells soft and warm in aisles but not in guilt.
That night, out of pure stubbornness and a slightly sick sense of humor, I hummed the cursed jingle on purpose,
Not to invite it back fully, just to test if the spell was broken or if it was waiting right below the surface.
The melody rose, sure, but this time I heard it differently—not as law, not as boss,
Just as a cheap little hook some exhausted songwriter threw together in August for a holiday he didn’t own, for a paycheck with a hidden cost.
I sang my own words over it, again, sharper now, funnier, rougher,
Turned it into a filthy carol halfway through, threw in a line about kissing someone in the stockroom, made myself suffer.
It shifted under my voice, lost some shine, sat lower in the mix,
Became just one more noise in my crowded head, not a master, just a trick.
The jingle never really left; it shows up every year when the first ad hits,
It grabs my brain by the collar for a day or two, drags it through its paces, runs its bits.
Yet now when it moves back in, I meet it at the door with sarcasm and a better verse,
I let it march in its little boots, then strip its power by mocking each rehearsed rehearse.
There’s always a jingle in my head during the holidays,
Sometimes it’s theirs, sometimes it’s mine, sometimes it’s just the sound of my own blood moving stubbornly through its maze.
Between the sleigh bells and the noise, I find pockets of actual quiet where I can hear my real thoughts hum,
And in those spaces, I write something that doesn’t fit in any commercial, something messy and human and off-beat, and that’s where the real songs come from.