TWO KINDS OF PEOPLE

I was recalling about the furor caused when Elvis' version of White Christmas was released in 1957.  As unbelievable as it seems today, one DJ called Elvis' rendition a "sacrilege" and some stations refused to play it.     Les laughed and said, "I hear some people want to go back to the 1950s!"

See my yearly article about the family debate over Christmas music:

                              ONE 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 Gerald and Les, 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.  

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 on Christmas Eve 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 began 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 the song played AGAIN.  Bode said that if people couldn't appreciate the exquisite irony of Christmas In Killarney on Christmas Eve 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 Nancy Wilson for That's What I Want For Christmas;  ONLY Peggy Lee for I Love A Sleigh Ride (Jingle Bells);  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).