Christmas brings its own special music–a time to enjoy the sacred and the silly. We’ll hear “Jingle Bells” although people traveling in a horse-drawn sleigh happened many years ago. Children’s songs including “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” and “Grandma Got Runover By a Reindeer” will be broadcast on the radio. In stores, they’ll play the ‘late, great’ popular singers from the forties and fifties such as Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” and Gene Autry’s “Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer.” I’ll take advantage of the internet to find Yogi Yorgesson’s “I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas.” I laugh at the way he describes how he gives up trying to buy a personal gift for his wife and his family’s gathering.
Elvis Presley’s “Blue Christmas” brings back memories of how lonely I was when the tune came out in 1957. My sailor boyfriend was aboard the aircraft carrier, U.S.S. Bennington, on the other side side of the world. Although the song is about lost love and I expected him to return to me, it captured my feelings. I was working at the Winnebago County ASC Office in Rockford. During our morning and afternoon breaks at the nearby coffee shop, I took advantage of the ‘3 plays for a quarter’ on the juke box. The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll lamenting over and over probably drove my co-workers crazy, but I didn’t care. I wallowed in my misery.
Singing the traditional carols during the Christmas Eve service at church is inspiring. The organ accompaniment brings the words to mind of my favorites, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” and “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.” Closing the evening with “Silent Night,” lighting individual candles and silently leaving the building makes it Christmas.
What’s your favorite Christmas music?
I don’t think I really have a favorite Christmas song, but I do have memories around music and the season. I remember mother hated the song, Grandma got Run Over by a Reindeer as she identified with it in some way. I remember that our one room grade school always put on a Christmas program down at the Newark Town Hall so there was a lot of practicing to get ready for it. One year all we kids were standing around the piano practicing our songs, and I got too hot and fainted. I fell flat on my face and broke my front tooth off. It stayed that way until I started High School when the dentist suggested that I have it capped which we did.
I remember Janice and I singing the duet, Oh Holy Night.
When our family went places in the car, we almost always sang so we sang Christmas carols during the Christmas season.