Tomorrow officially begins the Christmas Season, though as many of you have noticed the "soft opening" for the season now seems to be some time in September. I know the economy's bad and folks got to get in where they fit in, but seriously -- can't we wait until after Thanksgiving?
Ah, well, I digress.
Now that we are officially into, as Andy Williams once put it, "the most wonderful time of the year," it always makes me think about the Christmas entertainment that I must every year partake of or otherwise it just isn't really Christmas. Every family has their own traditions, and I've got mine, and it ain't Christmas without the following stuff.
For starters, I can't have Christmas without Dave Seville and those pesky little Chipmunks singing The Chipmunk Christmas Song." I used to have the Chipmunk's Christmas album back in the day (alongside our other holiday favorites like Bing Crosby's White Christmas LP and some album from Firestone) and we just couldn't get Christmas started without it.
Sadly, somewhere along the way the album was placed in the trunk of our old Oldsmobile and melted into a pool of black vinyl goo and Christmas was never the same. Thank goodness for CDs, because now we got that one in digital and my children love it every bit as much as I did as a child.
I also wait in anticipation to hear some of my favorite Christmas songs' definitive performances. I've gotta hear Bing Crosby sing Adeste Fidalis and hear him sing The Little Drummer Boy round-robin with David Bowie (what an unlikely duet). I also need to hear Jim Nabors sing O Holy Night in that super-deep voice that sounds like it should come from pretty much anybody but Gomer Pyle.
And to top it off, I need the velvet tones of Nat King Cole singing The Christmas Song to finish instilling me with the Christmas spirit.
It also is the season for television, and while a lot of the TV commercials this time of year crack me up it's still more about the decades-old clay animation of Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer or Charlie Brown's Christmas specials. It's not Christmas to me without them. And there are newer Christmas specials that my children have grown rather fond of, like Shrek's Christmas from two years ago. I also have a soft spot for The Polar Express.
For my wife, who grew up in the Pacific Northwest, it isn't Christmas unless she sees the Pacific Northwest Ballet perform The Nutcracker, as realized through the visuals of Where the Wild Things Are author Maurice Sendak and choreographer Kent Stowell. I admit it was grand to see, but sadly it took me twice to get through it without napping through at least a little bit of it (sorry). We were fortunate to have stumbled across a televised version of this presentation from the early '80s on Sundance Channel last year and can't wait to catch this classic again.
Then naturally all the tree trimming and Santa Claus visits and such will follow, but to me it can't be Christmas until I get my favorite Christmas songs and TV shows. I've waited patiently for 11 months and now that we're all official now, I can open up the floodgates.
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