Merry Christmas! That is my greeting in this space for the 38th consecutive year. Although I retired from this newspaper at the beginning of the year, I still write an occasional column and the one at Christmas is special to me.
Over the years, I’ve covered almost every aspect of my Christmas stories. I’ll begin this one commenting on Christmas music. As far back as I can remember, very little has changed with the artists and the songs played. You’ll often hear, “I’ve had all of that music I can take,” from some people. I’ll agree to that in a way.
Back in the 1960s, when I was a radio DJ, we started playing Christmas music the day after Thanksgiving. Way too early for me. By the time Christmas arrived we were burned out with hearing the same songs over and over.
Not much has changed today, except as a listener, you have the choice of whether to listen or not, except when you’re shopping.
But during the Sundays in December, I like to sing Christmas carols in church.
As we were driving to Lexington last week I had a Christmas music channel tuned in on Sirius XM radio. It is interesting what songs and artists we heard.
Over 90 percent of the artists we heard are no longer alive, and the songs we heard are the same ones I listened to on our big Philco radio over 75 years ago when I was a kid.
We heard Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Gene Autry, Dinah Shore, Nat King Cole, and one of my favorites, Peggy Lee, plus others before we had television. Later, popular on TV at Christmas’s were Perry Como, Andy Williams, to name a couple.
My all-time favorite Christmas music artists are the Ray Conniff Singers. I wore their albums out when I was a DJ. Every year since the 1960s I play several of their albums on my home sound system at this time of the year.
Other than “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer”, I don’t care for most of the newly introduced music that comes along at this time of the year. It is not very Christmasy, to coin a word.
YouTube has several Christmas channels with beautiful scenes that can add to a Christmas event. If you haven’t already, try it out. I think you will enjoy it.
My all-time favorite Christmas events were several years ago when Ron Green was minister of music at Central Baptist Church in Corbin. He led a group of singers that performed several Christmas dinner shows that were delightful. I was selected to be the Master of Ceremonies for the programs. Every year the events were sold out.
With that precious memory I’ll end this column hoping there is a song in your heart and you remember the reason for the Christmas season. Again, Merry Christmas!
