Christmas music on the radio: WLDB-FM (93.3) is the first Milwaukee station to go all Yule. WRIT-FM (95.7) is next.

Chris Foran | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

If you were waiting for Christmas music to come back to Milwaukee's radio airwaves, the wait is over.

WLDB-FM (93.3) switched to all-Christmas music at 3 p.m. Monday, with Bing Crosby's "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas." Following Bing on the station's playlist: Christmas tunes from Stevie Wonder ("Silver Bells"), Wham ("Last Christmas"), the VInce Guaraldi Trio ("Linus and Lucy") and the Carpenters ("The Christmas Song").

WRIT-FM (95.7) followed suit at 7 a.m. Tuesday, promising " 'round the clock festive music." First up for the oldies station: Brenda Lee's "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree." Following that rockabilly "carol" were a handful of more traditional Yule picks: "The Twelve Days of Christmas" by the Ray Coniff Singers, "Deck the Halls With Boughs of Holly" by Percy Faith, "Winter Wonderland" by Andy Williams" and "Silver Bells" by Kenny G.

WLDB, which brands itself this time of year as "Milwaukee's home for the holidays," has been the first Milwaukee radio station to switch to an all-Christmas format every year since 2016. Before that, WRIT had been the first to make the jump to an all-holly-jolly sound.

The past few years, WRIT switched to all-Christmas the same day as the kickoff for the Milwaukee Holiday Lights Festival — which traditionally starts on the Thursday before Thanksgiving. The station is the festival's media sponsor, in which it bills itself "Milwaukee's Christmas station."

This year's Holiday Lights Festival officially plugs in at 6:30 p.m. Thursday.

Last year, when Thanksgiving fell six days earlier than it does this year, WLDB went all-Christmas on Nov. 13, two days before the Holiday Lights kickoff, and WRIT made the jump just hours before the opening ceremony on Nov.15.

Clearly, some in Milwaukee needed a little Christmas earlier. A handful of WLDB listeners, frustrated that the station didn't flip to Christmas music earlier, took the opportunity to demand the move in comments on the station's Facebook page about an appearance at Christkindlmarket in its opening weekend at Fiserv Forum.

"WHEN are you turning on Christmas music???????????????????????" one listener commented. "It gets later & later every year."

For years, several Milwaukee radio stations, including WRIT and WLDB, vied to be the first to flip the switch to Santa's music. A few times, the Yule wars led one station or another to start the format as early as Halloween.

Milwaukee's not unique in this. Madison's WMHX-FM (105.1) changed to "Christmas music all the time" on Halloween this year; in 2018, WMHX went all-Yule on Nov. 15.

But in recent years, WRIT, which was one of the more aggressive combatants in the Christmas-music contest, has been the Milwaukee market's audience-share leader. That made rushing to a Christmas "stunt" format less urgent.

Contact Chris Foran at chris.foran@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @cforan12.