(This article first appeared in the December print edition of the Hendersonian.)
Family Christmas traditions are cherished. Do any of ours remind you of yours?
My earliest such tradition was to go to my grandparents’ house on Christmas Day, when my grandmother baked Pillsbury orange rolls. We have them with Christmas breakfast to this day.
Visiting Santa Claus to tell him what you want for Christmas is a tradition for many families. For me? Not so much. There was a black-and-white photo of me when I was about three years old, sitting on Santa’s lap. I was bawling my eyes out. I don’t recall ever visiting Santa again. No hard feelings, right, fat boy?
Christmas music, on the other hand, has been as close to a permanent holiday tradition as any I have.
In December 1963, when I was in first grade, I came home from school one afternoon to be surprised by an early Christmas present from Mom: The original “Christmas with the Chipmunks” album. I wasn’t extraordinarily devoted to Alvin & the Chipmunks, but I loved that album. I played it over and over that afternoon:
“We’ve been good, but we can’t last
Hurry Christmas, hurry fast”
We still play it on Christmas mornings.
Among my parents’ several Christmas albums, the one I liked best was “Holiday Sing Along with Mitch,” based on the popular 1960s TV show in which Mitch Miller’s chorus sang tunes from the Great American Songbook and the lyrics were shown as the bottom of the screen so viewers at home could, you know, sing along.
True to form, his Christmas double-album came with printed lyrics, and while I don’t remember anyone else in my family doing so, sometimes I would sit in the living room and sing along to songs like “Silver Bells” and “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” Playing the Mitch Miller holiday CD, among other favorite Christmas albums, remains a tradition around these parts.
Years later, we would sometimes assemble a little group of pals and astonish friends by showing up at their door on a December Saturday night to sing Christmas carols. Among the most delighted was the late Richard Overby, who answered his front door in his long underwear.
I don’t remember us watching Christmas movies as a kid, but I certainly stayed on top of holiday cartoon specials on TV, none more than “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”
Famously, before its first airing, network executives hated almost every aspect of the program: the slow pace, the simplistic animation, the lack of a laugh track, the jazz soundtrack by Vince Guaraldi, the use of real children instead of professional actors to voice the Peanuts characters.
But I loved it from the start when it was first broadcast Dec. 9, 1965. I hung on every scene, every line of dialogue, including Linus’ climactic “That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”
I wasn’t alone. It won an Emmy and a Peabody Award and has been a staple of the holiday season since. I’ve watched it almost every year.
We usually buy a cut Christmas tree. In 2001, just three months after the dreadful 9/11 attacks, we bought a tree for $7 at Rural King. It wasn’t much of a tree; Donna could carry it with one hand. She stood it up, studied on it a moment and declared, “Well, it’s straight. It’s proud. And it’s American!” It was a good ol’ tree.
The early 2000s brought two new traditions to our household. One was turning on TBS on Christmas Eve as it prepared to broadcast “A Christmas Story” for 24 straight hours. We kept it on the whole time.
About that same time, we began attending the candlelight service on Christmas Eve at our church. On one memorable evening, when we walked out of the service, we were delighted to see that an inch of snow had fallen. That was a rarity; over the past 15 years, we have had only two white Christmases, according to the National Weather Service.
We watch numerous Christmas movies each year, from “It’s a Wonderful Life” (I tear up every year at the end) to “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” to the numerous iterations based on Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.”
But when I first watched 1954’s “White Christmas” several years ago, I hated it. It became our tradition to watch it every year so I could silently mock it. But then I fooled around and fell in love … with it.
Sometimes, we have personal traditions. Donna was for many years a faithful attendee of the nearly century-old Alice P. Taylor Candlelight Service; now, she’s one of the organizers helping keep it alive. It returns at 4 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 8, at the Presbyterian Church of Henderson.
I’m sure you have holiday traditions as well. Whatever they are, have yourself a merry little Christmas.