Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

In 2004, I decided to give a Christmas party. It was going to be 'have a few friends in for a drink' but it grew. And grew. About fifty people came. I always try to anticipate everything when entertaining. If I'm not mistaken I had a DVD of a fireplace on the TV. I had wine, beer, soft drinks, water, coffee with whipped cream, liqueur. Lots of food.

FFP has a good selection of Christmas music but I got a wild hair and went on Rhapsody and bought a CD entirely of different artists singing "Have Yourself a Merry Christmas." From country to blues to jazz to rock. Covering the ground from Travis Tritt to Chicago to Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Ella. I slipped this in the player with FFP's selections. During the party it seemed to shuffle over to this CD improbably frequently. And every time it did, in spite of the wildly different styles and interpretations, it drove FFP crazy. We finally popped it out and put another disk in.

Imagine my surprise then to climb into his car in July and hear this CD on rotation in his car.

"I like it," he said. Maybe it made him feel cooler in the sweltering July in Austin. Maybe he'd come to appreciate listening to the style differences. He loves to cut CDs with a lot of artists doing the same song.

Now he thinks we should make a disk of "Christmas Song." You know the one that begins "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire...." I don't believe we have chestnut trees in Texas so that was always pretty nonsensical to me until 1972 when I was on my hippie tramp around Europe and discovered chestnuts being sold on the street by vendors with charcoal braziers. I love them, by the way.

So...how did I get off on that? Well, the writing prompt at Holidailies was "Holiday music: essential part of the season, or 'no way, it makes my ears bleed'?" I think my conclustion is that I like the music part. It has a certain purity. But I prefer something beyond the straight up interpretations. But NO CHIPMUNKS! And every fifty tracks or so throw in Robert Earl Keen's "Merry Christmas from the Family." Just to remind us of the basic insanity we've introduced into the holiday.

About today's Christmas photo: This shop window is from a new boutique in Rosedale Village on Burnet Road. I haven't been inside because I suspect they specialize in sizes 0-4.