Tag Archives: bing crosby

Christmas Playlist

5 Songs I am Singing, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, 7 Keep Christmas, 9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment, Stuff I Actually Think, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I tend toward the sentimental with Christmas music.  And I’m a little bit {more} country.  At Christmas.  For some odd reason.

  

But certain sings must have certain singers.

  • “Happy Holiday”s has to be Andy Williams.
  • “Winter Wonderland” belongs to Johnny Mathis.
  • “Drummer Boy” has to go to Bing, but Bing gets bunches of them (including “White Christmas” and “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”) because I love him.  he is Mr Christmas!

  

Ellie invited me to do a Christmas music swap, my favorites for hers and I decided, though on different days I am in love with different moods and melodies of Christmas, to put together 12 songs that represented our family from 1981 to the present.  They include Bing, and there is Judy Garland singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” but I included Whitney Houston (“Joy to the World”) and Mariah Carey (“O Holy Night”).  Kenny Rogers got 2 selections (“Kids” and “Christmas is My Favorite Time of Year”) because his was the first cassette Christmas music tape we bought as a new family.  I did include Casting Crown’s updated version of “I heard the Bells” because Dave really likes it and of course, the collection would not be complete  with the Charlie Brown Christmas song, “Christmas Time is Here.”

  

I didn’t get ot include a lot of songs I love by Dolly Parton, Karen Carpenter or Elvis, Alabama, Amy Grant or the Partridge Family.  I just really love Christmas music and I have lots and lots of it representing the 1940s to the present.  They made thousands of recordings in the 50s, it seems and each year, a new song or two is added to my list Christmas songs I love…

  

And I am kinda in love with this duet, which is more about winter than Christmas, but don’t you just love Willie and Norah?  I do!  CLICK BELOW TO LISTEN*



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It WAS actually cold yesterday for about 17.238 minutes and we actually got at least 6.798 minutes of some sleety, snow-ish, rainy/gray/sky something or another before blue skies busted back out just before sundown.  I had inserted the word “finally” above the word “cold” but alas this morning, another sunny, temperate day and they are saying no snow for Christmas.  But I am sure we’ll have some for May Day.  Grrrrr…….

What are you singing these days?

*Willie Nelson & Norah Jones – Baby, It’s Cold Outside

21 Days ’til Christmas ~ Holidays are Joyful!

2 Mi Familia, 5 Songs I am Singing, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, 7 Keep Christmas, 9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment, Stuff I Actually Think, , , ,

“The lights on my tree, I wish you could see, I wish it everyday.”

I grew up with very traditional Christmas music.  The 1960’s were when you could purchase an LP for $1.98 at the supermarket full of all the classic songs like “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…” and “A Few of My Favorite Things”  by various artists including Johnny Mathis or The Ray Conniff Singers.  Occasionally you’d buy an album by a stand-out like Bing Crosby.  I still treasure the 2 Christmas records I have by him.

“Merry Christmas, Darling,” by the Carpenters was my first sort of non-traditional Christmas pop-song.  I’d hold my dad’s little transistor radio (which I’d snuck from his second dresser drawer) to my ear, and, at barely 11, sing along with Karen, trying with all my heart to understand her longing.

Through the years more and more Christmas music has been added to the songs I love.  Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers have produced some great stuff.  Lee Greenwood sings a couple that always pierce my heart.  The Partridge Family album still makes me laugh and I even enjoy a Motown Christmas.  Harry Connick Jr. is great for seasonal cheery tunes as well as some sacred and I do love the 90’s Mariah Carey album.  And let’s not forget that Amy Grant, is a Christmas-music genius.

christmas-card-20081

Looking Back

But this year, I am feeling very traditional again.  I am reaching back to music I grew up with, the songs my mom played on the Hi-Fi during my early days.  I am less about the pop side of Christmas and anything that has been produced since 1970 and on, and sort of loving melodies that have been recorded so many times no one even remembers who did them first (like “Winter Wonderland”) and some that have been recorded a lot but the first recording is all that matters (like “White Christmas” by Bing Crosby).

The cool thing now is, of course, that “Merry Christmas, Darling” is a classic.  It IS one of the old tried and true songs of the season.  And now I understand the deep sentimentality.  For I wish, if I might “have the wish that I wish for tonight,” to gather everyone I love from near and far together during these long, dark winter nights to laugh and remember, to sing and make merry, to be close and bask in the 6-7000 lights on my tree.  And we could play Karen and sing…

That I wish you a Merry Christmas

Happy New Year, too

I’ve just one wish on this Christmas Eve

I wish I were with you, I wish I were with you. 

Bed space is limited here.  So if you are going to come and see me and make my wishes come true, please call in advance.

pictured: The Moslander family Christmas card, 1968.  Jeanie, Joey, Timmy, Tammy and Danny (Love love love to my siblings!  Please note: I was reading from The Children’s Book of Knowledge – which is why you are all so successful and smart.  You may thank me with a very nice Christmas gift.)

Mr. Christmas

2 Mi Familia, 5 Songs I am Singing, 6 Looking Back // Memories!, 7 Keep Christmas, 9 TV & Movies/Books & Entertainment, Stuff I Actually Think, , , , , , , , ,

I love my Dave.  And he loves Christmas. 

For 28 Christmases now, he has worked hard, planned, created, wrapped, shopped, baked, played, decorated and done whatever else is necessary to create a magical, love-filled, memory-made Christmas for our family.  Christmas mornings at our house are legendary feasts of extravagant indulgence and convivial love banquets of gifts and good smells and laughter and mountains of giftwrap and the music of Christmas and the love of the most incredible husband-father-grandfather.  It isn’t about the money spent, for often there has been precious-little of that, but it’s the thoughtful generosity of spirit, gifts that remind the recipient: you are loved, cherished and appreciated-this is my token of that.  But – wrap all of that in a huge Christmas bow and you have the gift of the season that my husband puts much great effort in to.

You are the original Clark Griswold, honey.  You are George Bailey and Father O’Malley ringing the bells of Christmas.  You are my handsome Jefferson Jones, my lover by tree-light.  You are Kris Kringle and Santa Claus.  You are the man described in “Holiday Inn” in the exchange between Jim Hardy and Miss Linda Mason (Bing Crosby and Marjorie Reynolds).

Linda:  You’re a lot like my father – just a man with a family.  Never amounted to much, never really cared.  But as long as he was alive, we had food to eat and clothes to keep us warm.

Jim:  Were you happy?

Linda:  Very.

Jim:  Well, then your father was a successful man.  I hope I can do as well.

Yes, baby, you are Mr. Christmas.  I love that you are.  I love that you are ever-committed to making merry for all.  I am smiling at how excited you are to be organizing the decorations – getting ready to haul them out in mere days.  You know where everything is and you’re planning, with a twinkle in your eye, to give us yet another wonderful Christmas.

As the Carpenters once sang: Merry Christmas, Darling…Jeanie

From Dickens’ A Christmas Carol~

“…and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.  May that truly be said of us, all of us!  And so, as Tiny Tim observed, ‘God bless us, Every One!'”

NOTE TO SELF: Love the Christmas keeper.

characters above from some of our favorite Christmas movies, including: Christmas Vacation, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Bells of Saint Mary’s, Christmas in Connecticut, Miracle on 34th Street, Holiday Inn

pictured: sweet daughter, Stormie did the graphic for me, from a photo of Dave and a Bing Crosby album.