Have Yourself a Quiet Little Christmas

Handling too-loud holiday music, plus "mass-production" thank yous and bio-hazardous roommates.

I've repeatedly heard Christmas music played over the loudspeaker on airplanes and in airports. The music is passionate (or overwrought, depending on taste), too loud to ignore, and played in places I can't escape. I don't celebrate Christmas, and at the risk of being labeled a Scrooge, I find this practice intrusive and somewhat disrespectful. Do you consider this custom appropriate? If not, is there a respectful way to ask that the music be turned down or off?

A.S. in Arlington

If that's your worst problem with the airlines, you've been having some sweet luck. Of course the music is irritating. I can't imagine that even the most ardent Christmas-lover would find his or her traveling experience enhanced by the broadcasting of Christmas music, constantly interrupted by garbled flight announcements and the hollering of TSA workers. Have yourself a merry little LAPTOPS OUT! Flight 869 to Denver will be departing from Gate 17!

You're conflating two different issues in your letter: being a non-Christmas person in a Christmas world, and noise pollution. Regarding the former, the vast majority of Americans celebrate Christmas, so those of us who don't may as well put up with it and be glad we don't have to do all that work. I don't see a lot of Jews falling off ladders trying to staple inflatable sleighs and reindeers to their roofs. I don't see too many Muslims or Wiccans crowding the "How to Cope With Holiday Stress" seminars that HR departments like to offer this time of year. Enjoy the pretty lights and whatever free cookies come your way, and be grateful that your calendar and wallet belong to you and not St. Nick.

On the latter issue, music and television in public places is just flat-out irritating, no matter what it is. Feel free to do your best to make any day of the year the day the music died (that is, make a polite request to management to turn the sound down). But my own experience in that regard -- in restaurants, which are usually more customer-service-oriented than airlines -- doesn't give me much hope for the endeavor.

I work at a small private school. For the holidays, our students' families collect money to buy gift cards for us. One family will usually buy a card to go with the gift and sign the names of the families who contributed. Faculty are divided on how to do thank yous. Some want to create a generic thank you letter and send personally signed copies to each family. Others insist each teacher should hand-write personal thank you notes for each family and that anything less would seem tacky. Are they right? Or is the "mass-production" approach kosher?

S.G. in Framingham

I think the mass letters are as kosher as a thank you note for a Christmas present can hope to be. The gifts themselves, while kind, are not individualized and are done as a group. If there are teachers who are bothered by the mass-produced, individually signed letters, they can write their own; I don't think the school needs to have a universal policy on the issue. Were I the parent of one of your students, I'd feel rather bad if my $10 contribution to a Borders gift card made you feel obliged to sit down and hand-write a note. Teachers have enough paperwork as it is.

I've noticed that most of the complaints concerning the "world's worst" apartment-, room- or housemates involve individuals who do not wash their dishes or clean their cooking messes promptly. After cleaning schedules, gentle reminders, and blunt requests have failed, what can one do (short of cleaning up after the other person) to keep a living space from becoming a biohazard zone?

S.F. in Lynn

One can move, and one can be more careful screening roommates in the future. (This is assuming you either have a single roommate or are the sole neatnik in a house of slobs. If there's one Oscar outnumbered by multiple Felixes, the neat folks are in a better position to exert pressure.) Some kinds of roommate problems can be worked out, but a dyed-in-the-wool slob who has resisted the normal proddings is not going to change ways. You can rant and scream, and perhaps the roommate will comply at least sporadically, but is that the person you want to turn yourself into? And is not the work of being the Dominatrix of the Dishwasher ultimately more exhausting than doing the dishes yourself? A possible solution might be for the hygiene-minded roomie to do the cleaning in exchange for the biohazardous one paying a larger share of the rent. But not everyone will agree to this, and it's still likely to leave the cleaning roomie feeling resentful. We all have our roommate horror stories, and the take-away lesson is always the same: Vet potential roomies carefully.

Miss Conduct is Robin Abrahams, a Cambridge-based writer with a PhD in psychology.