Maybe it’s just religious Christmas music that gives me fits. I honestly don’t know. But in case anyone is following this dreary saga, I just listened to an entire CD of Christmas songs with Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters, of all people, and somehow, it was [gasp] okay… Now that is really weird, or is it?

The songs were all from the early 1940s to the early ’50s. Popular music, mind you, including hit radio singles. Most of them were quite unfamiliar to me, although I might have heard the later ones. (I was very young, after all.) So they were songs from the time of my childhood, and as such were fascinating historical artifacts. What struck me most about the music were the spaces in it, and how well everyone could sing.

Earlier today I remembered another time or two when I actually enjoyed Christmas music as an a adult. There may be more. The first one I want to mention was during our first Christmas in San Cristobal, New Mexico. A couple of ladies we’d barely met invited us up to a little house way back up in the valley to sing traditional old Spanish carols. There were only about six or seven of us there, all Anglos, including a high school teacher and a son or daughter home from school in Russia. One of the women played violin, my wife played the piano, and I played guitar. It was very cold and snowy. We were all crowded into one little room. It felt like being marooned in the Alps with all the hot cider and cookies you wanted. All very civilized and genteel, as I recall. Another time was a long-ago Christmas party back in Maryland. For some reason I’d brought my guitar and amp, and with the hostess on piano, we jammed to what could only very loosely be called Christmas carols by the time we got through with them and had a rollicking good time. Later we tried that again at another party and it flopped like hell.

Fascinating, I’m sure. But after listening to that CD of Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters, it hit me that I grew up in an age when the CLARINET was prominently featured in popular music!

That’s right, the clarinet.

I think I’m done now.