The Whamageddon Challenge: There is (almost) no escape from “Last Christmas”.

Almost everyone who does not go out exclusively with earplugs knows this situation. It’s a few weeks before Christmas and things are slowly picking up again: As soon as you walk into a busier area, you hear that sound you’ve suppressed for a year: “Last Christmas, I give you my heart….” Oof, move on very quickly.

Then on the next corner: “…..make my wish come true…”, oh no, please not, “…all I want for Christmas is jijuu.” Here we go again. Whether you’re ready or not, these catchy tunes will haunt you from now until the end of the year. What is just part of a perfect Christmas for some people causes agony for others. Some, on the other hand, enjoy the musical Christmas run.

The annual Whamageddon challenge is currently trending again on social networks.

The Whamageddon Challenge is a playful attempt to escape the Christmas madness. This is about the well-known song “Last Christmas” by the band Wham! not heard from December 1 to December 24 – an impossibility.

The name Whamageddon appropriately reflects the dramatic nature of the situation: it is a mixture of the band name Wham! and the word Armageddon, which refers to the American disaster film or to the Biblical decisive battle.

The challenge even has its own website on which some rules for the joint survival game are formulated: The goal is to avoid “Last Christmas” for as long as possible, but this only refers to the band’s original Wham!.

Once you recognize the song, you’ve lost and are invited to share the sad story of how it came to be with like-minded people via the hashtag #whamageddon. Many people are already doing this on Reddit and X.

In the Reddit thread “One last Christmas” many users describe how they do that too heard the banned song through the Spotify algorithm, through careless visits to shops and restaurants or through nasty tricks from friends and are therefore out of the game.

The moment of adversity is usually described with the word “Wham!” – an English counterpart of “Wumms!” – introduced and people often admit defeat with the words “I got whammed”.

Some users also process their pain in heartbreaking and no less funny stories. A user named “Kyle Glenn” shares a dramatic message from the Whamageddon front with his sister:

And also on X people share their defeats in countless memes and gifs under the hashtag #whamageddon2023. Those who die in battle say goodbye to Whamhalla, based on Norse mythology:

While many are annoyed that they will have to wait until next year for a triumph, others are almost happy to be freed from the pressure of competition:

We wish everyone who has not yet fallen and continues to hold on bravely all the best – because there is (almost) no escape from “Last Christmas”.