Christmas Carols

When Tanner came over to watch WestWorld, he played Christmas songs for me while I made pizza. I have to say that it's pretty cool to have live Holiday music playing in the background while preparing pepperoni. And it's free! (Well, "free", if you don't count the hundreds of millions of dollars I spent on food, clothes, and piano lessons for the boy over the years.)

The best part is that he tried to jazz up the songs a little bit--make 'em a bit more interesting. Some Christmas carols lend themselves to jazz interpretations more than others, though. Frosty and Rudolph don't really shout out for a Mel Tormé treatment, you know.

Anyway, plenty of other people have written about the oddities found among our society's holiday song traditions: from the fingernails-on-the-chalkboard madness of the annoying "pear tree" song, to the frightening big-brother paranoia that comes from awareness that some dude "knows when you are sleeping, and knows when you're awake". So I won't go into any rants about why God would need to rest any merry gentlemen or why oriental kings need to smoke rubber cigars, etc. And don't get me started on the barking dogs, singing cows, and all the various barnyard vocalizations we're subjected to during this time of year, either.

Pa rumpa pum pum.

No, you won't get any critical words from me on this particular topic. The fact is that I love Christmas music! I love hearing a million different versions of the same song, and I love the cheery spirit that goes along with the whole concept of caroling. In fact, if you hang around with me at all during the next week, you might even get to listen to me sing! Now, that would guarantee that you'll have a great day, right?