Christmas Songs in October?

No, there’s a reason

Photo by Kristina Paukshtite on Pexels.com

I am prepping for my NaNoWriMo project, It Takes Two to Kringle. It’s the third Kringle Christmas romance. I’ve made a tentative outline which will get less tentative the second or third pass around. I have two weeks till NaNo, so I think it will get done.

But I also make a playlist for each novel I write, hopefully before the novel is written. I should mention that it’s not just my efforts; my husband contributes by searching iTunes for suitable songs. He’s at his best with Christmas songs.

The playlist goes as follows:

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas — Judy Garland
Jingle Bells (Synth-Pop Version)
The Christmas Can-Can — Straight No Chaser
Sister Winter — Sufjan Stevens
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! — Dean Martin
White Christmas — Johnny Mathis
The Christmas Waltz — Leslie Odom, Jr.
I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm — Barry Manilow
Justice Delivers Its Gift — Sufjan Stevens
River — Sarah McLachlan
Christmas Lights — Coldplay
Time To Fall In Love — Lindsey Stirling
Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy — Pentatonix
Merry Christmas Baby — Elvis Presley

A listen through

I listened to the whole playlist this morning and I’m really getting a good feel from it. It fits the moods of the novel, and it stands alone as a Christmas playlist (along with the two previous years’ Christmas soundtracks).

Now all I have to do is write the novel in November.

Exploring Christmas Music

So I’m listening to something from my childhood — the New Christy Minstrels, which was (is?) a large folk ensemble from the 60s that probably continues in some form to this day. They have a Christmas album, which we’re perusing in our great search for new Christmas music. It’s beginning to grow on me. Especially “Sing Along with Santa“, which brims with quaint snark. It’s very early 60’s — folky and earnest.

Then there’s the Apple Music playlist Hard and Heavy, which includes the AC/DC hit “Mistress for Christmas”, which I can’t quite reconcile with Christmas. I’m holding off on Bummer Holiday, another Apple Music playlist, until I am drinking some Christmas cheer and can laugh it off.

Everyone with a microphone has recorded at least one Christmas song, it seems, and compilations don’t capture all of them. I haven’t seen one with “Dominick the Christmas Donkey” (for which I’m grateful) or “Christmas at Ground Zero” (maybe it’s on “Bummer Holiday”?)

My happiest Christmas album discovery is Annie Lennox’s Christmas Cornucopia, which has been remastered and re-released this year. I could listen to it all day, as it’s the anti-Last Christmas.

Now we’re listening to Kids’ Christmas, and I should be hearing “I want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” any minute now.

Happy Christmas!

Christmas Music

The music playing in the house during the Christmas season is all Christmas, all the time. I’m not tired of it yet (except for “All I Want for Christmas is You”).

The Christmas album I grew up with was The Little Drummer Boy, the original 1958 version from The Harry Simeone Chorale. This is the one with the blue and white cover with a drummer boy playing on a red marching band-style drum. And how is drumming going to be good for a newborn baby? (Harry Simeone has a lot to answer for here.)

The album is very good. Choral pieces, many as medleys of Christmas music with a basso voice narrating pieces of the Christmas story. It’s a performance piece as much as anything, and if you get anything other than the 1956 version (or the reissue of the album in 1967 as a Texaco promotional item as I had growing up), you’ll miss the narration, which makes the whole album.

My most pleasant surprise is how much I like The Waitress’s 1982 hit “Christmas Wrappings”. I don’t know how I missed it all these years. It has a frenetic New Wave sensibility and a very 80’s happy ending.

And oh, I really like Pentatonix. Too bad they only have four Christmas albums.

Christmas music is one of our music rituals in the household. We also have classical followed by jazz on Sundays. (So right now, it’s classical Christmas followed by jazz Christmas on Sundays).

After Christmas we go back to the usual music, with me favoring the singer/songwriter playlists on Apple Music, and Richard favoring classical. By then, maybe I’ll be tired of Christmas music. Probably not.

Decking the Halls

The halls are decked! Well, actually, my husband decked the living room and left the hall alone. I’d get pictures of the living room, but the coffee table is a bit cluttered as always. No House Beautiful home here.

On the bench next to me we have a display of Christmasy stuffed toys — a vintage Coca Cola stuffed bear, two Ty Monstaz (Holly and Tinsel), Velveteen Rabbits male and female, Hello Kitty with a Christmas present, a sloth wearing antlers and a scarf, and Plum Puddy. If Christmas is a holiday for children, I want to indulge my inner child a little.

I’m working from home for the rest of the semester, with a dead week followed by online finals. So having the house decked out and Christmas music playing helps. Right now “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” plays on the stereo and, well, it is.

Our Christmas celebration, constrained as it is, may be just what we need right now. The pre-Christmas winter celebrations heralded the passing of the longest night and the slow return to the bright days. The Christians held onto many of the customs, knowing that they needed a celebration to get through winter. We hope for a vaccine for COVID in the New Year, so we turn to the brighter days just as our ancestors did.

The Christmas We Make

I’m sitting on my couch in a room transformed into the Christmas my husband and I never felt we had. Both of us had mothers with illnesses, especially around the high-stress times of Christmas, and we tiptoed through the house hoping not to aggravate things. So now we have stockings (hanging on a windowsill; our mantle is a fake fireplace and scaled to make the stockings look ridiculous). We have greenery and seasonal stuffed toys and a now-collectable Avon Christmas train tree that plays tinny Christmas carols. And a tree, lit like my tree in my childhood was, with little multicolored lights. (These modern lights are a bit day-glo, but I’m okay with that).

We play Christmas music almost non-stop. One thing I didn’t know about my husband when I met him is that he has an ever-growing set of Christmas albums on iTunes. Right now, it’s cool jazz; I’m looking forward to some classical pieces on the soundtrack.

This is where some would piously import that trees and such aren’t the real meaning of Christmas. I would argue against this; the real meaning of Christmas is celebration. Let people celebrate the spirit of good that they will. Richard and I celebrate recovery from painful childhoods, among other things. We celebrate that we can make a Christmas for ourselves.

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I really apologize for the test note blog yesterday — I was testing to see if IFTTT could submit a post announcement to Twitter and Facebook so I could quit the extra step of using Hootsuite to post. (Note: It can’t.) Ten of you actually read the post, which is really nice of you.)

On Christmas Music

I’m not tired of Christmas carols yet.

Given that it’s only Cyber Monday, a designation that seems odd given the online stores have been offering sales since Thanksgiving, I haven’t had too much exposure to Christmas carols this season.

But I have my favorite Christmas albums, Harry Simeone Chorale and Sinatra and Johnny Mathis, and — OMG, my husband just put Mantovani on (ok, Boomer)!

I have my new favorites, Pentatonix and Take Six, and — not “All I Want for Christmas is You”, which I’m tired of even though I haven’t heard it yet this season.

Throw in Benjamin Britton’s Ceremony of Carols and a bit of Handel’s Messiah, and my Christmas slate is filled with much music to listen to.

If you have Christmas favorites, please let me know in the comments!

Watching Black Friday

So we went to Black Friday at two of the commerce centers of the Kansas City area — Oak Park Mall in Olathe, KS, and the Plaza in Kansas City. People were shopping pretty civilly; Christmas music was not nearly in the air as much as I expected. There were lots of people to watch; we bought some clothes and an obnoxious jingle bell necklace for myself. It flashes red and green as well.

Our mini-vacation is ending today; we’ll drive home and put up our Christmas decorations tomorrow. A lot of people I know put up their decorations pre-Thanksgiving because a well-publicized study said that people who put up their Christmas decorations earlier were happier. We decided that after Thanksgiving was early enough.

I didn’t come up with any new writing ideas over the break. I think I’m too tired to right now and should stick to my classes and grading till I get there.

Let me be the first to wish you a happy holiday, no matter what holiday you celebrate this season.