I don’t know who puts up the Christmas lights at your house, but in my family, as soon as I was able, it was always me, pretty much by default.
I was the only one mechanically inclined or skilled enough to tackle this or any kind of project around our household. I certainly didn’t inherit any handyman instincts from my father. True, he could nail down clients right and left for his advertising business, but watching him actually work with a hammer was more frightening than being witness to his golf game.
I also thought it best to keep tools, especially scissors, away from my mom right after she lopped off the top of my left ear while trying to cut my hair for the first time.
As for my younger brother, he was smart enough to learn that if I volunteered to do any chore around the house at all, he wouldn’t have to.
I suppose my closest competitor was my older sister, but I began to have my doubts about her when I gave her an oil-burning lamp one Christmas and after rummaging through the carton it came in, she looked up at me and asked, “But where’s the electric cord?”
With this in mind, I decided to take charge, and at a very young age, with ladder, hammer, nails, and lights in hand, I became the official Yuletide illuminator.
I hung the larger blue, red, green, orange, and white bulbs around the outside of our house, and wrapped the smaller blue, red, green, orange, and white bulbs around our tree on the inside.
I almost changed my mind the first time out when I discovered that it would take me longer to untangle the snarled mass of light strings someone left behind in a musty old cardboard box than it would to hang them up. My predecessor apparently had not the patience or presence of mind to bind the light strings properly after taking them down, nor the inclination to protect any of the bulbs, many of which were broken. But at least they were easily replaceable, unlike the tiny bulbs that were introduced years later by the sadistic soul who invented the curse of mini-lights where if one little lamp went dark so did the entire string.
Nowadays more and more people seem to drape electric icicles from their rooftops. While I tend to prefer the more traditional Christmas tree lights I grew up with, I can appreciate anyone who spends the time to brighten up my holiday season.
Of course, you can’t hang a wreath or some mistletoe unless you are in the proper frame of mind. And the music of Christmas will provide that.
“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire . . .”
You just can’t beat the traditionals offered up by Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, Johnny Mathis, Frank Sinatra, Andy Williams, Gene Autry, Vaughn Monroe (whose “Let it Snow” isn’t really a Christmas song, but who cares), Ray Conniff, Percy Faith (whose two instrumental albums I highly recommend) and others.
When I was a kid, you could hear all kinds of Christmas music on one radio station, so you were exposed to pop, jazz, classical, country, rhythm and blues and rock and roll and novelty. Songs created in the ’40s and ’50s are still played today. Not a Christmas goes by without hearing “Jingle Bell Rock” by Bobby Helms, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” by Brenda Lee, “Blue Christmas” by Elvis, and “The Little Drummer Boy” by the Harry Simeon Chorale. These are classics now, still.
So is this one, written by David Seville, that went on to be a number one hit in 1958.
If R and B and soul was your thing, you got songs by the Drifters, Otis Redding, Arron Neville, the Youngsters (whose 1956 “Christmas in Jail” is a scream), Doo Wop by the Melodeers and too many others, and “Run Run Rudolph” by Chuck Berry.
As the ’60s arrived, many new groups entered the Christmas fold. “Sleigh Ride” by the Ventures was just one, “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town” by the Four Seasons was another, then along came the Beach Boys with “Little Saint Nick” and “He’s the Man with All the Toys,” followed by the Beatle’s perennial Yuletide offerings every season.
My favorite without question is Phil Spector’s Christmas Gift For You, a collection of his flock of artists in a Spectorian rock and roll fashion belting out standards. The album was recorded in July of ’63, and released the day that JFK was shot, so people weren’t in the appropriate mood and Phil’s adventure into new territory failed. Today it is a classic, exemplified by Darlene Love’s “Christmas, Baby Please Come Home,” the most powerful Christmas tune ever and I think Phil’s best cut.
Don’t forget the ’70s, that gave us seasonal tunes by the Carpenters, Jose Feliciano, Elton John, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Joni Mitchell, the Eagles, the Kinks, and so many more.
Leave your radio or Pandora on, and get into the spirit.