JustWalt's Mental Meanderings: We Need a Little Christmas (Music) Now!

All day, every day I sit in a cubbyhole that’s 15 feet from a compact stereo which is tuned to a radio station which is playing Christmas music 24/7.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against Christmas music. I love Christmas music. I love to listen to Christmas music and I love to sing Christmas music. But it gets kind of like sharp fingernails scraping across a blackboard the 8th time each day when I have to hear Karen Carpenter sing “Logs on the fire, fill me with desire” (that just sounds so “wrong”—kinky—even though I know there’s another innocent line about wanting to be with a loved one). And if I have to hear “We Need a Little Christmas” one more time, I swear I’ll go postal on the first friggin’ elf I see.

I’ve performed Christmas music ever since Junior Hi although much more sporadically since I’ve been an adult. Christmas cantatas in a church choir are, I think, much more enjoyable for those singing than those who have to dress up and silently suffer through them. (By the way my wife just asked me what a Christmas cantata is and I told her that it’s when a choir performs this “hoity toity” classical-type Christmas music that has a lot of notes and that nobody particularly likes to hear because it doesn’t have a real good beat or snappy lyrics or a toe-tapping melody—although I still consider Handel’s “Messiah” to be kick ass even though most people don’t really seem to get that at Christmas the song is “For Unto Us A Child is Born and at Easter it’s the “Hallelujah Chorus”).

But I digress. In the cause of brevity, I offer up for your listening enjoyment a “medley” of Christmas music. It starts with one of my all time favorites, Gene Autry’s “Here Comes Santa Claus”. It’s included because it reminds me of my father who would wander through the house all Christmas season singing snatches of this delightful song in a Kentucky hills tenor twang. Every time I hear it, it reminds me of Dad and makes me smile.