MtH #9 Christmas
Christmas
No question, my favourite time of the year……………okay, don’t start looking for a punch line. You don’t trust me, I know, to make a serious comment and not desecrate it later with some flippant remark. It’s a disorder (psychological, neural, biological, genetic, take your pick).
You gotta love it. Unless you work in retail. I love Christmas music. Not just for the nostalgia ( god, when I hear “Christmas In Killarney” I can still remember exactly what it felt like being naked and doing a jig around the Christmas tree at age two…… and again last year), but also because it has nice melodies and you can dance to it (see above). One other big thing. It exists in the broadcast ether for just three weeks a year and so retains that special connection with the event. Unless you work in retail. Or go to malls a lot. I heard Christmas music in a Walmart in Rapid City a week before Halloween one year. I mean, lord love a duck, they can’t wait at least until the stale candy, cheap wigs and threadbare Batman costumes are back in the storeroom? I never worked in retail…….but I’ve spoken with enough store workers to know that long before December they lost any love for Rudolph’s nose, bells on bob-tails, pesky drummer boys, or any kind of nuts roasting.
Best Christmas Music
The carols of course. There’s a Perry Como Christmas album from the mid or late 1950’s that we grew up with. All carols on one side and the secular and novelty stuff on the other. On the carol side there is a version of Joy To The World with an intro that defies description but I’ll try. It opens with a two bar trumpet fanfare and then an immediate cast of thousands angelic choir for just two bars. They got the Cherubim and the Seraphim together for this one folks. Another two bar trumpet fanfare followed by an even bigger celestial choir. I think they added the Mormon TC and the St. Michael’s Boys to these two bars. Man, that must have been expensive. And the logistics! They’d need a separate wrangler for the Sopranos, Tenors, Altos, and Baritones. And the politics! The Seraphs think they’re better than the Cherubs because they have two extra wings. But get this…..The Cherubs have four faces! That’s two more than Donald Trump.
Keep in mind that all those angels were hired for just four bars. Not to mention the Mormon Tabernacs and St. Mike’s Tykes. No expense spared for this PT Barnumesque salute to the infinite.
Back to Joy To The World We’re just eight bars into the tune and the freakin’ gates of heaven have been opened! Next, a short cadence and suddenly everything drops out and inexplicably we have Mr. Excitement singing the first verse acapella. What a shock! There’s more drama later, but that intro alone should be enough to Zen you into oneness with the universe and like Ebenezer Scrooge, have your own life-changing personal epiphany …………
Merry Christmas