April Winchell is full of the Joy of Christmas

I can't help but love this woman and the irreverent, but relevant way she looks at the world. It's worth clicking right here and flying on over to her website to listen to the grand array of Christmas mp3s she has available for your listening pleasure. All downloadable and FREE. Other goodies too, but you'll have to see for yourself.

Where else on the planet will you have this once in a lifetime opportunity of hearing Christmas Cookies and Holiday Hearts by the inimitable Caroleer Singers?

And that's not all folks! If you click right now you'll get Bubble Tub by Carrie Lanza (Mario's ?) and many, many more.

Don't wait. Click now.

Garrison Keillor's Christmas letter

Garrison Keillor's Christmas letter, Salon.com, December 13.

"Dear friends. We are getting older but are in fairly good shape and moving forward insofar as we can tell. We still drink strong coffee and read the paper and drive the same old cars. We plan to go to Norway next summer. We think that this war is an unmitigated disaster that will wind up costing a trillion dollars and we worry for our country. Our child enjoys her new school and is making friends. She was a horsie in the church Christmas pageant and hunkered down beside the manger and seemed to be singing when she was supposed to. We go on working and hope to be adequate to the challenges of the coming year but are by no means confident. It's winter. God is around here somewhere but does not appear to be guiding our government at the moment. Nonetheless we persist. We see kindness all around us and bravery and we are cheered by the good humor of young people. The crabapple tree over the driveway is bare, but we have a memory of pink blossoms and expect them to return. God bless you all."

Christmas Song by Mel Torme & Robert Wells. Nat King Cole sings.

If Irving Berlin's White Christmas is the most recorded Christmas song ever written, then The Christmas Song with words and music by Mel Torme & Robert Wells has to be a very close second. And to hear Torme sing it! Nat Cole does a superb job and I love listening to his version as well, but I don't know; there's just something about the Torme. I have to admit, my preference changes according to the mood of the moment. I keep both at the ready at all times.

In Torme's book, It Wasn't All Velvet (New York: Viking, 1988), pp 83-84, he describes how the song came to be written on a scorching July afternoon in California.




One excessively hot afternoon, I drove out to Bob's house [Robert Wells] in Toluca Lake for a work session. The San Fernando Valley, always at least ten degrees warmer than the rest of the town, blistered in the July sun.... I opened the front door and walked in.... I called for Bob. No answer. I walked over to the piano. A writing pad rested on the music board. Written in pencil on the open page were four lines of verse:

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire
Jack frost nipping at your nose
Yuletide carols being sun by a choir
And folks dressed up like Eskimos.

When Bob finally appeared, I asked him about the little poem. He was dressed sensibly in tennis shorts and a white T-shirt, but he still looked uncomfortably warm.

"It was so damn hot today," he said, "I thought I'd write something to cool myself off. All I could think of was Christmas and cold weather."

I took another look at his handiwork. "You know," I said, "this just might make a song."

We sat down together at the piano, and, improbable though it may sound, "The Christmas Song" was completed about forty-five minutes later. Excitedly, we called Carlos Gastel, sped into Hollywood, played it for him, then for Johnny Burke, and then for Nat Cole, who fell in love with the tune. It took a full year for Nat to get into a studio to record it, but his record finally came out in the last fall of 1946; and the rest could be called our financial pleasure.

Boiler Christmas Card

This is sort of what I had in mind for a Christmas card this year. My wife is unsure. She thinks it might take too much explaining. She might be right. I just thought it was cute.

Dating Habits of the Very Young and a Letter to Santa

Calvin and Hobbs


My eleven year old son came home from school yesterday, and while he was eating his chocolate chip cookie and drinking his glass of milk, he started to tell me about the note he found in his locker. He even offered the note to me to read. It was from a girl and she was asking him out on a date. At least, it seemed that way to me. She did warn him, however, that her parents said she wasn't allowed to date until she was 16.

Thank God.

I'm not ready for this.

Parents were invented to make children happy by giving them something to ignore. Ogden Nash

Irving Berlin's Classic Christmas Song

"Not only is it the best song I ever wrote, it's the best song anybody ever wrote." Irving Berlin

White Christmas, had its debut in the 1942 film Holiday Inn, starring Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire and Marjorie Reynolds. The song won Berlin an oscar for best music, original song in 1943, and became the title song of the film White Christmas in 1954 with Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera Allen.

I'm dreaming...

Every year I promise myself not to get caught up in the frantic rush of Christmas and each year I find myself ensnared. Not unpleasantly, you understand. I've actually grown to enjoy it. ("Grown to" is an interesting phrase. I first "grew out of" and now I've "grown to".) It has become fun. When you have an eleven year old boy, how can it not be? I still grouse and complain about the commercialism and all that, but I do love Christmas. In my heart I love it. I just try not to let on.



It just occurred to me that I haven't heard Bing Crosby sing White Christmas this year. But wait. Here's a link to Elvis singing it.




When I was a kid, I dreamt a lot about a white Christmas. I don't recall that we ever had one, but it didn't matter. The dreaming was enough. Just imagining what I would do if the snow came. I was always trying to find some definitive evidence that Santa Claus existed. Reason told me it was impossible for an overweight guy in a sleigh pulled by tiny, flying reindeer to cover so much territory in one night. Still, I had no real proof that he didn't exist. A little snow on Christmas Eve would be all I needed. It would be impossible for him to get in and out of our house without leaving sleigh tracks, footprints, reindeer droppings. Some trace.

Now that I live in New York I do see a white Christmas now and then, but I've never think to check for footprints in the snow. Hmmm.

And so it was that tonight's theme became Christmas trees and lights. From Wales, Virginia, North Carolina and Louisiana.

Christmas in Wales

"Take a photo tour of what has to be the best dressed house in Pantperthog!"

Christmas Tree Mittens

If you like quilts and Christmas take a peek.



Thank you www.quilttownusa.com:
"A holiday tradition of decorating Christmas trees with mittens for donations to needy children inspired Virginia Jones of Taunton, Massachusetts, to create "The Mitten Tree" (51" x 59"). Mittens do not have to come in pairs when you make your version of this delightful wintertime quilt."

"They started the display in the 1970s with 100 lights and a manger."

Lights in the night: Naughty or nice?

By BERNARD BAKER
Register & Bee staff writer
December 1, 2006



DANVILLE VA. - A Caswell County Christmas tradition is under way again.

Leon and Ann Paschal’s Christmas light display lit up on Thanksgiving night.

Ann Paschal said Tuesday that the couple’s Casville, N.C., home should be adorned with 1.5 million lights - up a couple hundred thousand from last year.

“Last year, we had some people visit us from Hollywood, Calif., and some from Italy came by who were visiting relatives in the area,” she said.

There could be one hitch with the display that is set to run nightly until New Year’s Eve.

Some of the Paschals’ neighbors complained to the Caswell County Sheriff’s Office about people parking in their yards and blocking their driveways.

Cheryl Fuqua, spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office, said the Paschals’ attraction is popular in the area, but the street is narrow and there’s not much room for parking.

“Parking there is a problem. Cars can be towed,” Fuqua said.

People can drive through the Paschals’ property to view the display or park their cars and walk. Ann Paschal said many people prefer to park their cars and walk around the display.

She said her and her husband don’t want to do anything to upset their neighbors. They want people to enjoy the Christmas lights and the display found inside the log cabins.

“People really seem to appreciate what we do,” Ann said.

Last year, the couple’s electricity bill topped $11,000. However, contributions from viewers took care of those bills.

Now that both Leon and Ann Paschal have retired, they spend most of their time working and improving the display. They started the display in the 1970s with 100 lights and a manger.

“We’re getting older and slower. That’s all we do right,” said Ann Paschal, who retired from the Sanitary Café in Reidsville, N.C., after 29 years on the job.

Contact Bernard Baker at bbaker@registerbee.com or at (434) 791-7986.

Silver bells

There's a feeling in the air. And I thought I heard the sound of--I must be imagining--did you hear that? Bells? Silver bells? Can you feel it! In the air?

The plaza guys are putting up Christmas banners, and it's very cold. Feels like snow though none is predicted. Buying groceries I saw people I'd never seen before.
Strangers. People who only come out for the big one. Carts packed with chestnuts and turkeys, cans of pumpkin and evaporated milk.

And the cell phone thing is marvelous. I saw two people pushing carts with both hands, talking to themselves at full volume. At first I thought they were just ordinary folks pushed to the limits by the accelerating need to buy. Then I noticed they both had headsets and were probably just checking in with home to see if they should pick up a dozen eggs or more toilet paper. An extra six pack of Michelob for friends who might drop in unexpectedly. I admire those people. No inhibitions like me. I'd never be brave enough to do that.

A women with two cute little tots pushed me aside in produce as I was trying to find some reasonably ripe bananas, proclaiming "I only have five minutes to get through the whole store!" "Oh, I understand" I said. And why are all the bananas so green these days. I don't see the overripe bananas, perfect for banana nut bread, anymore.

People are just people after all. Just trying to put food on their families.