CAN'T HAVE ENOUGH CHRISTMAS MUSIC

There are two kinds of people in the world: those, like myself, who can't get "enough" of Christmas music, and the others, like Les and Gerald, who get so tired of Christmas music that they threaten to blow up the stereo! To keep harmony (PUN INTENDED) in the family, I compromised several years ago and agreed to have no Christmas music in the house until the day after Thanksgiving. Gerald got in my car BEFORE Thanksgiving and Barbra was singing "Silent Night". He said, "I thought....." Before he was able to complete his sentence, I interrupted and said, "I only agreed about IN the house; the car is my domain!"

My brother Bode and I loved to sing Christmas carols and it was usually to the embarrassment of everybody else! One of my favorite stories: we were visiting Bode and family in Florida during the holidays and we went into a Mexican restaurant and over the loudspeaker was playing Bing Crosby's "When It's Christmas in Killarney". Bode looked at me--I looked at him--and we joined arms and started singing, at the top of our lungs! The other family members with us slunk away to a table in the hope of other people not knowing we were related. Bode went to the Manager and asked to have it played AGAIN! Bode said that if people couldn't appreciate the exquisite irony of "Christmas In Killarney" in a Mexican restaurant, then they were hopeless!

Bode and I had our definite favorites: ONLY Nat for "The Christmas Song"; ONLY Bing for "White Christmas"; ONLY Elvis for "Blue Christmas; ONLY Judy for "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas"; ONLY Harry Belafonte for "Mary's Boy Child"; ONLY Darlene Love for "Baby Please Come Home"; ONLY Vince Guaraldi for "Christmas Time Is Here"; ONLY Gene Autry for "Here Comes Santa Claus": ONLY Burl Ives for "A Holly, Jolly Christmas"; ONLY Perry Como for "There's No Place Like Home For The Holidays"; ONLY Peggy Lee for "I Love A Sleigh Ride" ("Jingle Bells"); ONLY Nancy Wilson for "That's What I Want For Christmas"; ONLY Giselle Mackenzie for "It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas"; and only ONLY Rosemary Clooney for "Suzy Snowflake" (which Bode always sang to me since I was a little girl!).