Wishful Thinking

As I clear the shoe boxes from my most recent sale, the incessant jingling refrains of pop Christmas music that fill the store suddenly go quiet, and an eerie silence descends.

I search the floor expecting others to be looking up in dazed bewilderment, like a scene out of the movie Independence Day where the giant spaceships move into position over major metropolitan areas, but no one seems fazed, so I go back in the stockroom with my boxes. 

I remark in passing to a co-worker, “What does it mean when the music stops?”

“That Christmas is over?” he says wistfully.