Most of us have special traditions in our lives which most emphatically usher in the Christmas holidays (or whatever holiday it is that we celebrate this time of year.) Kathy and I have several of them, including the Christmas Festival at Carthage – the sing along Messiah – our annual caroling expedition with family and friends – the “Look for the Light” Sunday School program at church – and of course the services for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day where all of this comes to richest fruition. I look at that list and think “Whew! This is why the month of December sometimes gets a bit crazy for us.” But if given the chance to somehow shorten that list, there is absolutely no way I would. Each one of these events is an integral part of our Christmas celebration, – each one a part of what Christmas means to us -and to leave one of them out would be like settling for Two Wise Men or downgrading the “Gloria in Excelsis Deo” of the angels to “jingle bells” on the harmonica. (With all due respect to harmonica players everywhere.)
I actually have let go of a couple of holiday traditions that meant a lot to me but which got to be too much – especially a Christmas Day program I created at WGTD titled “Music to Open Gifts By.” I would actually sign on the station at 6 a.m. and begin playing a cavalcade of wonderful Christmas music for the entire morning. When I was single and living alone, I think this was a way for me to feel a little less alone until I was able to get home to my family (the phone would occasionally ring as grateful listeners would call to thank me for the music) – and it also felt like I was providing a significant service by giving people a place on the radio dial where they could find someone besides Perry Como or Dolly Parton. But at some point, the warm and fuzzy feeling this gave me began to be outweighed by competing feelings of exhaustion and a sense that most people could be safely left to their own devices to find good music on Christmas Day. (Once I had married Kathy, the thought of leaving her alone on Christmas morning while I ran off to be a broadcaster seemed downright ludicrous.)
I also discarded at some point a Christmas music request program which I did for about fifteen years – often on Christmas Eve Day. Back in the days when our station had money for such things, we would advertise the program in the Kenosha News and as a result the phone would ring off the wall for hours on end. My favorite requests, of course, would be when someone wanted to hear “anything from the Saint-Saens Christmas Oratorio” or “any Christmas carol sung by Dame Joan Sutherland.” But occasionally someone would call asking for “I saw Momma kissing Santa Claus” or “O Holy Night” sung by the Backstreet Boys (cringe, cringe) or maybe even stump the band with some Bulgarian carol I’d never even heard of. (I remember one person calling year after year for “Softly falls the Snow” by The Browns. Never found it, although it wasn’t for lack of trying.) Unfortunately, the money for advertising such programs eventually evaporated and my Christmas request program became a dispiriting case of sitting by the phone and waiting for the phone to ring, with literally hundreds of Christmas CDs in towering piles around me, going sadly unplayed. So this tradition also went the way of the 8-track tape- which is fine, especially in this digital age in which just about anything you really want to hear is available to you at the touch of a button. In such a world, a Christmas music request program seems as quaint as a game of horseshoes.
But the Christmas season retains plenty of joy as it is – and Saturday night was among my very favorite holiday traditions- the sixth annual Christmas concert of the Kenosha Pops Concert Band, the group for which I serve as emcee and soloist throughout the summer. This concert happens at Siebert Chapel, which has splendid acoustics for such a group – and director Craig Gall always puts together an absolutely wonderful program which gives you everything from “O Come O Come Emmanuel’ to “Here Comes Santa Claus” and everything in between. The band is a truly exceptional group of musicians, and they played magnificently all night long; in fact, there were several moments in the concert when I thought to myself that this may be a finest all-around music-making I’ve heard all year long. In addition to being the emcee, I always have the pleasure of singing “White Christmas” – and I also play organ with the band for the big finale of the night, LeRoy Anderson’s Christmas Festival. (I am also asked to play a solo on the organ – and usually offer up the “Hallelujah Chorus” – which this year I had to play while wearing winter boots, which provided a bit of unwanted extra challenge!)
What made this year’s concert extra special for me was that Craig asked Kathy to join me in singing John Rutter’s “Candlelight Carol” – and as she began singing the first few notes of the piece, you could just see this look of surprise and delight on the faces of so many audience members who had no idea (although it scarcely seems possible) that Kathy was such a wonderful singer. It was quite an auspicious debut for her and only the first of what I hope will be many performances with the Pops Band in years to come – and part of what made it especially neat is that Kathy’s dad was in the audience to see and hear it.
Someone missing was my friend Playford (his wife Kathy is a flutist in the band, but she missed this concert for understandable reasons) – and I came within centimeters of dedicating my final solo of the evening, Auld lang syne, to his memory. But I always find myself seriously verklempt as I begin singing this particular song (which always closes this concert and also the final concert of each summer season) even under the happiest of circumstances. Had I mentioned Playford, I would have been trying to sing through a lump in my throat the size of a basketball – and I worried that many in the band would find it just as tough to play the piece. So I kept the dedication to myself, and as I soared up to the climactic high F on “WE’LL take a cup of kindness yet. . .” I thought to myself “this one’s for you, Playford.”
pictured: this is actually just a portion of the Kenosha Pops Band – the brass section – playing a suite of carols arranged by LeRoy Anderson for brass. (the woodwinds had their turn a little earlier.) That’s music director Craig Gall on the podium. This was one of the highlights of the whole night – and of the whole season, for that matter.