I Hate Christmas – Ama Yari (2025) – Album Review

Album: I Hate Christmas

Artist: Ama Yari

Release Date: December 21, 2025

Confession: I fucking hate Christmas. It wasn’t always this way. It used to start innocently enough in late October with a Halloween Tree. I’d wander into one of those fluorescent Hobby-Joann-Michaels labyrinths and procure a pitiful evergreen tree cast aside on clearance – I’d always go with white. I’d go to the Dollar Store and buy spooky ornaments forged from whatever toxic slurry can still legally be molded into bats, skulls and other miscellaneous beasts. I’d take some red paint and do that flicky thing with a paintbrush to make some cute blood splatter and bob’s your uncle, my Spooky Holiday Tree always stood proud. And the moment Halloween was over, I was ready for Christmas. I’d immediately start listening to the Twilight Zone music suites intermingled with Vince Guaraldi to tune the soul for winter’s holiday promise. But just like Danny Elfman, Christmas turned out to be one big fucking lie. A grand deceit. Another reminder that the things we trusted for comfort were never as pure as advertised.*

*To be clear, I’ve never trusted Danny Elfman, I just wanted to shoehorn this in and wanted an excuse to remind everyone he’s a creep.

I Hate Christmas lives right in that realization – when nostalgia rots, the lights feel too bright, and the music finally shows you the truth. I mean, the truth was always there for anyone not sleepwalking through the pageant. The real sickness is the belief that things will somehow turn out fine. I think that’s the problem with this country – people still have hope for that outcome. It’s not going to happen. Just get over it. Ama Yari harbors no delusion. Ama knows exactly where they are. This album is filled with satire sharp as broken glass. It’s bleak, sharp, and painfully lucid. No veils. No comfort.

The standout track for me is Bought by the Money. It’s so fucking catchy and it feels like the melancholic soup of a million lost Christmases. You know, those holiday seasons where you weren’t living in the moment and watched Christmas just pass you by completely. Like, where was it? What was I chasing? Why did I spend all that money? Does even really care about each other?

“You’re going to be all right. All right? That’s just life. Right? We’re gonna spend our money right. All right?”

Ama Yari – Bought by the Money (TRACK 3)

When you’re in your parents house sitting on your beanbag chair, you know the one you’ve been sitting on since you were a pre-teen, turning a deaf ear to the grim prophecies your kin will proclaim about the state of the world, connect to your mom’s Sonos speakers via Bluetooth and announce to the room that you’ve found a great album to finish opening presents to. Behold: the perfect Christmas album.

Would absolutely recommend.