Listening To Christmas Music, Already

I know it's early, even for a Christmas music fan, but I already have my favorite Christmas music station on lock and load. About five days ago I click the bookmark on the computer and listen. It invigorates me and after a few sappy tunes I forget about the horrid world in which we live. In short, for a few weeks during the Christmas season those songs make me feel better. But is that why I listen to Christmas music on my computer every year at this time? Is it because of tradition and rote or is hearing I'll Be Home For Christmas by Perry Como ingrained in my DNA?

Computers are anew technology. They were not around when I was a kid, yet I suspect my affection for Christmas music began in my childhood pre Christmas days when I listened to my mother play her Christmas records at home. She had one of those old console stereo record players and among her favorite albums were quite a few Christmas albums, recordings by the biggest recording stars both deceased and alive.

One ritual we had that started the Christmas music listening fest was to play the albums all Thanksgiving Day. Thanksgiving meal included not only fluffy white mashed potatoes, but also Bing Crosby's White Christmas. Post Thanksgiving to New Year's Day the residents or visitor to our home was likely to be assaulted with Rudolph the Red Nose reindeer or Nat King Cole's German language of  O'Tannenbaum.

Even at age 10 or so I was a conspirator to this house Christmas music. My mother would hand me money to pay for the latest Goodrich Tire annual Christmas album that I bought for her after a short bike ride to the nearest Goodrich store. The Goodrich  business is long gone but those albums live on. I see them at thrift stores even today when I sift through the records area of the store. It was the biggest music promotion of the holiday season and millions awaited it like a child awaits opening Christmas day presents.

That Goodrich album memory is still pushing me to the Christmas music station bookmark I like. And amazingly, I recognize many of the cuts played on my computer as being from the famed Goodrich albums. Those albums had every sort of Christmas music possible. There is the religious Christmas tune, 'Ave Maria', for instance. And there is the light "modern" Christmas song written and sang in the heyday of Christmas music from post W.W.II to the late 60s', tunes like Johnny Mathis (the greatest singer of all of Christmas music, the man with the Christmas voice) singing 'We Need A Little Christmas'. The novelty Christmas song like Jimmy Durante's version of 'Frosty the Snowman' turns up as well.  And the sappy Christmas tunes that teach the old values of love and respect, so foreign today in our cold and sterile world, are played there as well. The Percy Faith Orchestra's O Come, All Ye Faithful is one example that sappy at Christmas isn't crappy. It's just music for our frustrated souls.

Why there is even a familiar New Orleans selection that I still hear on that Christmas station for which I thank from Goodrich and the other imitators who also put out those Christmas albums. Louis Armstrong's 'Christmas in New Orleans' makes me both delighted and a bit maudlin in reminding me of the great and exceptional old city that I often miss here in  ordinary Portland.

 My love for Christmas music has been transformed from the old LP albums of my mom's Christmas world to the digital version of it on line that guide my own. Tradition is a good thing.