Countdown to Xmas - day 4 (Xmas Eve)

I had to work today – on Christmas Eve. My job isn’t vital, you know, like a police officer or firefighter, but for some reason management thought we needed to be there. Even though we’ve been off the last two days and we’re off tomorrow. And even though we really did nothing today except eat a company-bought lunch and look at the Internet.

Today should have been my “Grinch post” day. But since I’ve already done that and I already had songs planned for today, we’ll go on like I’m in a good Christmas mood.

I don’t have “O Christmas Tree” (or O Tannenbaum, as it was originally known), which is too bad, because I was thinking last night about the Christmas trees we used to have when I was a kid. My parents never got a real tree. Every year they’d pull out the box with the three 2-foot-long sections of center pole and the dozens of fake fir branches that slid neatly into precut holes in the “trunk.” The whole thing resembled nothing so much as green bottlebrushes. But my sisters and I would decorate it, we’d put the ancient angel on top and, voila! there was our tree.

As we all got older, my parents got even lazier about the tree. Instead of undecorating it, they’d carefully cover the whole thing, take it out to the garage and store it as-is until next Christmas season. The only thing that changed from year to year was the addition of more tinsel, until eventually the thing looked more like a large, sparkly pyramid than a Christmas tree.

A few years ago they threw out the lower half of the tree so they could put it on a table and not have to move furniture around. Now they have a tinselly, semi-tree-shaped pyramid sitting on a table in the living room, positioned in such a fashion so as not to block the TV. They just can’t see any reason to spend money on a real tree that would shed needles and have to be thrown out after the holidays. I guess they have a point.

I’ve gone a little more traditional with the Christmas Eve music: Sinatra, Elvis, etc. I don’t know if they could all be considered classics, but they’re all pretty decent, nonetheless. Go trim your tree.

Santa Baby.mp3 Madonna
Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home).mp3 U2
Little Saint Nick.mp3 Beach Boys
Blue Christmas.mp3 Elvis Presley
Run Run Rudolph.mp3 Chuck Berry
I’ll Be Home for Christmas.mp3 Frank Sinatra

Labels: holiday

posted by aikin @ 6:23 PM