On the first day of Whamageddon, my true love gave me…

Noise canceling headphones? A ticket to Antarctica – or to another place without a reception?

Anyway, something to reduce the chances of accidentally listening to “Last Christmas” by Wham! listen. And everyone’s favorite holiday challenge was lost.

The goal of Whamageddon? Get through the entire holiday season without watching the holiday hit Wham! from 1984.

But since there are 24 days of Whamageddon – running from December 1st to 24th – and since “Last Christmas” was reportedly the most played song on adult contemporary channels with Christmas-only formats last year, the chances are good not to their favor.

A must avoid

Every unintentional turn of the radio, every trip to the dentist’s office can spell disaster. And heaven help you if the 2019 movie “Last Christmas” comes to TV. Losers who are “beaten up” are encouraged to “make a confession and withdraw from the game” on social media. As if the holidays weren’t stressful enough!

“I was officially beaten today around 3:00 pm EST while wrapping presents and listening to Christmas music,” one victim posted on Facebook on December 1st.

“And I’m already outside. Thank you United Airlines…they play our song when boarding,” another posted on December 2nd.

That’s nothing. Last December, a DJ in Northampton, UK intentionally played the song to 7,215 people at a football stadium. Matt Facer, known as “DJ Matty,” had to formally apologize to the angry crowd for beating them up en masse.

“I tried it and thought it would be pretty funny to wipe out 7,000 people who couldn’t avoid it, but it’s obviously not funny,” he said.

In doing so, Facer violated Whamageddon rule number 6. According to the official website – yes, there is one – Whamageddon is a “survival game”, not a “battle royal”. Deliberately sabotaging someone else’s game is not cricket. “Don’t be an idiot, okay?” she advised.

American roots, Danish descent

This unusual holiday activity appears to have originated from the Little Drummer Boy Challenge, which originated in Northern California in the mid-1990s. This was even more difficult – listeners didn’t have to hear the hated “Pa-Rum-Pa-Pa-Pum” for a whole month, from Thanksgiving to Christmas.

Four Danish friends, Thomas Mertz, Rasmus Leth Bjerre, Oliver Nøglebæk and Søren Gelineck, give thanks for developing Whamageddon two decades ago, in collective despair as they heard George Michael whistle for the millionth time: “Last Christmas I gave you mine Given your heart, but the very next day you gave it away…”

For many years, “Last Christmas” held the record for best-selling single that never reached the top of the charts (1.9 million copies, not counting streams). And then finally, on New Year’s Day 2021, the time has come did is at the top of the British singles charts.

No wonder avoiding it has become a game. One that caught on internationally when the creators founded a Facebook page in 2016.

Whamageddon is now without a doubt the biggest Danish holiday export since cookie jars.

“We kind of noticed that this song was playing over and over again,” Mertz told CBS in 2023.

Do you like the song? Here is a workaround

But what if you How “Last Christmas”? What if winning the game meant losing a valuable part of your vacation?

Well, don’t worry. There are two hacks.

One of them is a variant of Whamageddon, called Wham!Hunter – which you enter Points to hear the song.

The other is to listen to a cover version. There are many of them.

According to rule #3, covers and remixes of “Last Christmas” don’t count. Only the original. As a service to our readers, we hereby provide a Whamucopia of alternative versions on YouTube. (Our favorite: the last one).

∎ “Last Christmas”, Whigfield, 1995.

∎ “Last Christmas,” Ashley Tisdale, 2006.

∎ “Last Christmas”, Crazy Frog, 2006.

∎ “Last Christmas”, Cascada, 2007.

∎ “Last Christmas,” Taylor Swift, 2007.

∎ “Last Christmas,” cast of Glee, 2010.

∎ “Last Christmas”, Joe McElderry, 2011.

∎ “Last Christmas”, Ariana Grande, 2013.

∎ “Last Christmas,” Carly Rae Jepsen, 2015.

∎ “Last Christmas”, Backstreet Boys, 2022.

∎ “Last Christmas”, Tarja Turunen, 2023

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Whamageddon game returns. Can you avoid Wham!’s “Last Christmas” song?