Dad who hates hearing Christmas songs too early concocts smart solution

By Adam Wareing via SWNS

A dad who hates hearing Christmas songs too early has concocted the ultimate solution - programming his Amazon Alexa to reject his kids festive requests until December.

Mark Lovell claims he was forced to act when he overheard his three children chatting about Christmas tunes in the first week of November [6th].

The 42-year-old gets "irritated by Christmas starting too early" so he opened the Alexa app and set up a skill to respond to phrases such as "play Christmas music."

Footage of him testing the routine shows him requesting festive tunes only for one of his four smart speakers to tell him "I'm sorry, I can't do that until December."

It then recalls the day's date, which Mark added to emphasize the request's earliness, and then returns to its idle mode without playing a single festive note.

The dad-of-three has programmed Alexa to block the phrases "play holiday music," "play Christmas albums," "play Christmas carols," "play Christmas tunes" and "play Christmas hits."

He claims kids Zachary, nine, Max, seven, and Polly, five, [all Lovell] haven't tried to play a song yet, but the skill, titled early Christmas, is waiting in case they catch the Christmas spirit "too soon."

The theatre-building consultant denies his cunning trick is Grinch-like and insists he loves festive music - but only when December begins.

Since posting the trick to Facebook earlier this month [November 9] dads have hailed him a legend and one even adapted the rule to block his daughter from playing Taylor Swift songs.

Mark, from Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, England said: "I heard them talking about Christmas songs and thought 'not this early, I've got to do something about it.'

"You can teach Alexa routines and I thought I'd add some phrases in the way they might say it to get the response from Alexa.

"This is all preemptive. They haven't played one yet but the kids are getting more and more comfortable with telling Alexa what they want on.

"I've tested it, but nobody knows about it yet. It might be a bit of a shock when they realize. I hope it's not needed but we'll find out.

"I've long maintained that Christmas comes too early and I feel like December is the start. I see adverts in September and get irritated because it's not even Halloween yet.

"As soon as it's December I'll be deleting the rule and playing Christmas songs on repeat too.

"It's great to know some people are using [the routine]."

Mark says even his 42-year-old wife Hannah Williams-Lovell doesn't know about the rule and he won't be telling her about it unless she tries to play Christmas music too early too.

His Facebook post has only been liked by 23 fellow dads, but he wants to share it with more parents who might be annoyed by an early start to festivities.

One dad simply commented: "Legend!"

Another added: "Loving it."

However, one dad wasn't too pleased, jokingly commenting: "Boooooooo!"