Regarding Darby Hinkley’s piece in the Dec. 2 edition of The Alpena News, I’ve accepted with resignation that December in the Greater Alpena-Ossineke Metropolitan Area means at least 25 days of unrelenting “Jesus is the Reason for the Season.” And I understand that some people enjoy Christmas music, just like some people enjoy head cheese, or cornhole.

Regarding Ms. Hinkley’s three “terrible Christmas songs, ” I can see Wham!’s “Last Christmas” being on that list. It’s unlistenable, especially when compared with the other huge Christmas song in the UK that year (1984), “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” Her aversion to “Frosty the Snowman” and to Dan Fogelberg’s “Same Old Lang Syne” identified in her piece as “some ridiculous song about meeting your old lover in a grocery store…,” can be chalked up to personal preference, I guess. De gustibus non est disputandem, as the kids say.

As for Ms. Hinkley’s “all-time favorite Christmas song,” “What Child is This?” and its vision of “visiting the baby Lord Jesus,” I suppose it’s too much to ask that she prefer something more secular inclusive and less aggressively Christian, perhaps something like “Silver Bells” or “Fairytale of New York” or “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.”

Then again, the News is unapologetic about being a house organ for the local Christian community. As for the rest of us, adhering to other faiths or to no faith at all, well, at least we will have a superior jukebox in Hell or wherever it is we are supposed to end up when the dust settles.

CLYDE A. SHUMAN,

Ossineke