TheBanyanTree: Joy to the World

[Margaret R. Kramer]

Music awakens my Christmas spirit.
-- Julie Andrews

I still have my first Christmas music record my parents bought me when I was
a little girl.  I had a record player in my room and at Christmas time, I
played that record over and over again.  I also still have the record “A
Christmas Carol” with Sir Laurence Olivier as Scrooge.  That was probably
the scariest interpretation of that story ever.  I used to have nightmares
after listening to it!  I would love to play it for my grandsons (I actually
have a turntable as part of my stereo system), but could they listen to a
story without seeing the pictures?

I sang in the church choir up until I was in sixth grade.  My parents were
odd people, shoving me through the church door, while they stayed home on
Sunday mornings.  I went to Saturday practices and sang at Sunday services
and on Christmas, our church would combine all five of their choirs into one
massive Christmas Eve music extravaganza.  My parents didn’t even attend
that service.

I took piano lessons and played the clarinet in band.  I love music, but I
have a mediocre talent at best.  I think the choir, piano, and clarinet
lessons gave me an appreciation for how music is constructed and how it
comes together and the work that goes into learning to perform a piece well.

I learned Christmas carols on the piano and played them until my fingers
wore down to little stubs.  My school always had Christmas concerts and I
participated in the band and sometimes the choir.  I remember having to wear
a black skirt with a white shirt for these events.  My parents did manage to
attend these.  And there was punch and cookies served after the concerts in
the lunch room.

My ex-husband was in his church choir.  He wasn’t the best singer, but he
enjoyed the music and camaraderie of the choir.  I enjoyed going to midnight
mass on Christmas Eve and seeing what the choir director and organist (they
were married) had cooked up.  They did some amazing and magical things with
the choir.  They never did the “same old, same old” Christmas carols.  Every
year the choir director put together something new and exciting.

So music has always been a part of Christmas for me.  Over the ages, the
world has responded to the Christmas season by composing some of the most
beautiful music ever heard.  It’s amazing how some of those carols composed
in the Middle Ages have survived to the 21st century and still have intense
feelings associated with them.

Through the years, I’ve searched for good Christmas music.  I think it began
when my ex-husband and I purchased our first CD, it was Handel’s Messiah.
That is a fantastic piece of music and most of us only hear the Hallelujah
Chorus (remember to stand when you hear it!) and we don’t realize or have
the patience to listen to the entire piece.  I always try to take a quiet
time before Christmas and play the CD set so I can let that music wash over
me.

Then I bought the usual schmaltzy Christmas CDs – gosh, there are some bad
ones out there.  But eventually I got more sophisticated about it and began
to pay attention to what I was buying.  I’m gradually building up a good
collection of Christmas music.  I have the good old reliable Mormon
Tabernacle Choir, Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Frank Sinatra, Charlotte
Church, guitar music, Celtic music, the Sounds of Blackness, and George
Winston’s December.  There’s a great little CD, Bethlehem After Dark, with
cello and piano that I just love.

I have the A Very Special Christmas CDs, although I don’t like the 5th one –
it’s too edgy for me, but my son loves it.  I bought Christmas Adagios and a
jazz guitar CD this year.  It’s amazing how I can listen to the same songs
performed over and over again, but the interpretations are different, and I
keep coming back for more.

We went to Doc Severinson’s Christmas concert last night at Orchestra Hall.
I think this is the third year we’ve gone.  It’s a great program with all
the usual participants.  He has the orchestra, a big band, a choir, bell
ringers, and himself still playing a great trumpet at age 77.  He changes
the program around a bit each year.  This year the bell ringers led the
processional into the Hall and we ended with, you guessed it, Handel’s
Hallelujah Chorus.  Some of us knew to stand!  It’s the live music
extravaganza I need to hear to settle myself in the proper Christmas mood.

I brought along Bing and the first A Very Special Christmas CD, which is the
least edgy of all of them, and we played them in the car on the way to and
from the big city.  I took the long way following the river home so we could
see the Christmas lights, marvel over the half moon in the subzero sky, and
revel in the Christmas spirit.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at comcast.net

http://www.polarispublications.com
Be a star!

http://www.bpwmn.org
Business and Professional Women of Minnesota

I have always thought of Christmas time as a good time; a kind, forgiving,
charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of
the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up
hearts freely.
~Charles Dickens