"God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman", "Angels We Have Heard on High", "Silent Night" and "O Come All Ye Faithful". Songs I have heard and sung a million times over.
When I think of Christmas music from my childhood, I remember that you actually had to pull a vinyl record out of its sleeve, put it on the stereo turntable, locking it in place, watching it drop and then the needle gently moving over to start the first track. Yes, I know I just dated myself but that's okay.
As I sit here writing this post I remember listening to Bing Crosby, Burl Ives, Nat King Cole, Andy Williams, Robert Goulet, Perry Como and Mitch Miller. Listening to the music and singing along as my family decorated our tree. I remember listening to the music when us kids would help my Mom when we baked Christmas cookies.
When I think of Christmas music I remember as a teenager, growing up in North Carolina and going with my friends to sing this wonderful music as we went caroling from house to house in our neighborhood. I remember Christmas choral concerts from school as well.
Robert Goulet's versions of "The Little Drummer Boy" and "Do You Hear What Hear" are two of my favorite songs. Then there are Burl Ive's songs from Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. The only version of the "Christmas Song" I truly love is by Nat King Cole.
I remember certain record album covers, so I went looking to see if I could find them on the internet. We had the Firestone Christmas Favorites Series, Time Life Treasury of Christmas, the Grant's department stores collection of A Very Merry Christmas. I don't remember if we had each volume but I know we had a few. We had Mitch Miller's Holiday Sing Along, The First Christmas Record for Children which was put out by Goodyear. Of course we did have Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer too.
I went home to visit my parents the week before Thanksgiving and one of my cousins posted a video by the a cappella group Pentatonix. The video is for the song, "Mary, Did You Know". Momma and I played the video and absolutely loved this version of the song. So while we were out shopping on that Friday we both bought the CD. A new Christmas music memory to treasure with my Momma. Thank you to my cousin Luann Hoback Wood for posting the video! If you haven't seen the video, you can go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifCWN5pJGIE.
Now that this piece is done I am going to fix myself a cup of spicy cinnamon tea, listen to some beautiful Christmas music and get a jump start on upcoming ACCM posts as well as a few others.
Dawn you are going to have a wonderful little Christmas memory book by the time you've opened all the doors on your Advent calendar! ~ Cathy
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