Tag: Christmas

Christmas favorites

Magoo_Christmas_scrooge.jpg
Time to start ANSWERING those Ask Roger Anything questions. And you may STILL pose your queries.

Tom the Mayor asked:

What is your Favorite Christmas Song, not devotional, but popular, e.g., “White Christmas”?

This is similar to that asked by noted author Jaquandor:

I imagine by the time you answer these it’ll be after Christmas…

Well, in the Christian calendar, we’re in Christmastide until Epiphany, which is Three Kings Day on January 6, so we’re still good.

…but what’s your favorite Christmas song?

Besides the aforementioned Stevie Wonder and Julie Andrews songs:

Since Tom mentioned White Christmas, I should note Mele Kalikimaka -Bing Crosby with the Andrews Sisters
White Christmas -The Drifters
Christmas All Over Again – Tom Petty
Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) – Darlene Love
Christmas Wrapping – The Waitresses
Coventry Carol – Alison Moyet
Christmastime is Here – Vince Guaraldi
The Mistletoe and Me – Isaac Hayes
This Christmas – Donny Hathaway
Winter Snow – Booker T & the MGs (starts at 2:30)
Happy Xmas (War Is Over) – John Lennon and Yoko Ono
Jingle Bells – The Fab 4, which is NOT the Beatles
Santa Claus is Coming to Town – the Jackson 5. But not so much the version by the moving snowman The Daughter brought down from the attic last week.

I’m a sucker for pretty much any version of Little Drummer Boy, mostly because I used to sing it in church as a child. So it’s OK by Harry Simeone Chorale (the single I grew up with), or Bing & Bowie (I watched that program when it first broadcast, just after Crosby died) or a number of others.

BTW, Jaquandor makes a good case for Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, but NOT by a certain crooner. Which reminded me, somehow, of the saddest Christmas song, “I’ll Be Home For Christmas.” I heard Kim and Reggie Harris sing it several years ago; damn thing made me cry.

Jaquandor also asked a few other questions:

Least favorite [Christmas song]?

It tends to be more VERSIONS of songs. Run, Rudolph, Run by Chuck Berry is OK, but the version by Bryan Adams irritates me. I have some compilation albums, and on virtually every country album, when someone sings O Little Town…, they pronounce it Beth-LEE- Hem, instead of Beth-LEH-Hem; astonishingly grating.

That said, Dominick the Christmas Donkey by Lou Monte is probably my least favorite song. While others get tiresome from repeated listening, this one I hated from the outset.

Favorite [Christmas] movie?

Tough one. Just haven’t seen a lot of them; never saw Elf or Christmas Vacation, e.g. Just saw Miracle on 34th Street last year for the first time, and it had its charms. I guess I’ll pick It’s A Wonderful Life, maybe because I misjudged it as pablum, sight unseen, maybe because it was deemed as possible Commie propaganda.

But I always love A Christmas Carol. The George C. Scott version is my favorite, though I’m quite fond of versions with Alistair Sim, and with Mr. Magoo.

Is Trading Places a Christmas movie? Is Home Alone? I might add them to my list.

Least favorite [Christmas movie]?

There was a terrible one on the Disney Channel recently, but it wasn’t even worth noting the title.

Do you have a favorite hymn?

Oh, that’s impossible! One thing for sure, though: it probably won’t be a unison piece. I like four-part music with my hymns.

So I pulled out my recently replaced Presbyterian hymnal, and picked a few. These are in book order:

Angels We Have Heard On High
Break Forth, O Beauteous Heavenly Light (I mean it’s JS Bach harmonization!)
Lo, How A Rose E’er Blooming
Ah, Holy Jesus
O Sacred Head, Now Wounded (more Bach)
Christ the Lord Is Risen Today!
Thine is the Glory (Handel)
Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty (this was on page 1 of the Methodist hymnal I grew up with)
Come, Thou Almighty King (also reminds me of my growing up)
All Hail The Power of Jesus’ Name! (the Coronation version, rather than Diadem)
My Shepherd Will Supply My Needs
Our God, Our Help in Ages Past
A Mighty Fortress Is Our God
God of the Ages, Whose Almighty Hand (always associated with Thanksgiving, and more specifically, with the songbook in my elementary school)
Amazing Grace
Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah (LOVE the bass line)
Fairest Lord Jesus (a childhood favorite)
O Master, Let Me Walk with Thee
Just As I Am (definitely a childhood favorite, probably from watching those Billy Graham programs)
The Church’s One Foundation
Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee (Beethoven!)
Here I Am, Lord (the only one on the list with a unison verse)
Lord, Dismiss Us with Thy Blessing
Lift Every Voice and Sing (a whole ‘nother context)

Not a lot of spirituals here. Now the choirs I’ve been in have done arrangements of hymns I enjoy (Every Time I Feel The Spirit probably most often), but for congregation and choir singing, not so much.

Merry Christmas 2014

Joy to your world, for whatever reason.

Addams_family_XmasI think it was George Harrison, on one of those Beatles Christmas records, who quoted, or at least paraphrased, Eva Heller in Beim nächsten Mann wird alles anderswro: “We wish you everything you wish yourself.”

If you celebrate the birth of a baby born on the wrong side of the tracks, as I do, that’s great. (Yes, I know Jesus was almost certainly NOT born around this time; don’t get all Scroogey on me.)

But it’s a nice holiday, one that even atheists can appreciate. Or, perhaps, families divided by politics. And it can be true whether or not you’re with family.

Check out the guide the HRC has published, Coming Home to Faith, to Spirit, to Self, which offers ideas to LGBT people “for establishing and owning a faith identity, sharing your gifts, taking stock of your faith community, encouraging inclusion, and coming home or finding a new one.”

Hey, why WERE so many beloved Christmas songs written by Jewish musicians?

So joy to your world, for whatever reason, or for noel reason at all. Even, or maybe I should say especially, in Sierra Leone.

Jingle all the way into space!
***
R.O. Blechman CBS Christmas Message (1966)

Christmas eve 2014

We are all illumined by candlelight in a period of silence.

Christmas booksSomeone I knew on Facebook before I met her in person tagged me, and a couple of other people, with this photo, which came from who knows where. (I was going to say “Allah knows where,” but deferred.)

One of the things about the Christmas Eve service, pretty much in both my current church and the previous one, is that they are about the same, every year.

There’s music, interspersed with readings. The readings, particularly, the later ones, are pretty much as they were last year and the year before that.

(I occasionally wonder if people who only attend church on Christmas and Easter think that the church has a really limited repertoire.)

We light the candles during the singing of Silent Night as the room lights are dimmed. We are all illuminated by candlelight in a period of silence.

One could see this as boring, and predictable, yet I choose not to do so. It’s Christmas Eve again, and we wait in anticipation of what is going to happen.
***
O Holy Night, with Trombone Shorty.

Christmas spirit

rog.leg.SantaIt seems that every year, I work harder to get that Christmas spirit, whatever that means. I actively ignored Cyber Monday and Black Friday, and whatever that abomination is that has people shopping on Thanksgiving day.

BTW, had to correct someone about the origins of the term Black Friday; no, it doesn’t have anything to do with slavery.

Maybe taking some Christmas quizzes online will help. Christmas carol quiz: Can you name the song from just one line? Well, of course I got 15/15; I’m a choir person.

Which holiday movie am I? Elf? I have never even seen it!

Speaking of movies never seen, I guess I’ll not be watching Saving Christmas with Kirk Cameron any time soon.

If you’re going to be visiting a bunch of relatives during the holidays (may I say “the holidays”?), this could be useful: Second Cousins Once Removed Explained. It’s easier once you find the common ancestor.

Here are some more Christmas links:

Kristen Bell and Straight No Chaser’s ‘Text Me Merry Christmas’.

Opossum Carols, or Walt Kelly’s Xmas Postludicrosity.

Siren’s Crush, featuring Rebecca Jade (#1 niece) singing Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas and Silent Night.

Why the spike in the cost of six geese-a-laying?

I tried to create a link to capture all of SamuraiFrog’s posts of the season, but it missed this Kristen and Dax piece.

I do believe I’ve gotten all of Jaquandor’s seasonal posts.

From the Renaissance Geek: Louisville Underground.

Santastic No. 9 video mashups from christmash.com, including a Beatles one.

Ugly Holiday Sweaters & Suits.

My favorite contemporary (and by that, I mean post-1950) pop Christmas song may be Stevie Wonder – What Christmas Means To Me. But I’m still terribly moved by Julie Andrews – The Bells of Christmas from a Firestone (tire company) LP I still own.

Probably my favorite Christmas comedy routine is Steve Martin – 5 Christmas Wishes.

Oh, the picture: this is my sister Leslie and me, almost certainly at Fowler’s in downtown Binghamton, NY, a couple of years ago.

You want to talk about REAL religious persecution…

Open Door USA has a map where Christians are being threatened in this world today. Please note that the United States is NOT listed.

kristallnachtWatching part 5 of the Ken Burns masterpiece on The Roosevelts last month, I saw a brief mention of those terrible events of November 9-10, 1938, Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass” “the wave of violent anti-Jewish pogroms… throughout Germany, annexed Austria, and in areas of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia recently occupied by German troops.”

Not an hour later, I was watching the CBS Evening News, and there was a report about anti-Semitism being on the rise in Europe again: “The memories of Jewish persecution — of the November 1938 Kristallnacht when Jewish institutions were destroyed — are burned into German memory. Frankfurt’s main synagogue, badly damaged that night, is one of those now under armed guard.”

The ethnic minority in Iraq called the Yazidi who was faced with elimination by ISIL, or ISIS this past summer.

Open Door USA has a map where Christians are being threatened today, including much of Asia and northern Africa. Please note that the United States is NOT listed.

I mention this preemptively to say: Americans, there may be a war on Christians in this world, but it ain’t happening here. Let me make it crystal clear: people wishing you “happy holidays” on December 24 does NOT qualify as religious persecution.

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