For a couple of 2-hour car rides, my daughter and I were transported out of our daily life and away from our actual ages, and we became timeless.
That was all thanks to the magic of Christmas music.
Of course, we marked the start of our Christmas music extravaganza with eyerolls and chuckles. We were driving to my best friend’s house, deep inside North Carolina, when we changed the stations on the radio dial.
We were looking for any pop or rock song with a little pep to bring us down U.S. 220, but what we got instead was “Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly.”
“Fa la la la la, la la la la,” we both sang back loudly, with laughter. We turned up the volume and continued belting out the old familiar tune.
The day after Halloween is pretty early for Christmas early for Christmas music, but that’s what 99.5 does, we recalled, as we were singing.
Yes, we know people go for streaming music rather than the radio, and when we are alone, we do a lot of streaming. However, when we are together, we listen to the radio. It seems to be a neutral meeting ground for opposite generations. When one of us doesn’t like a song, it’s not the other’s fault. It’s the radio station’s.
Likewise, we do not stream Christmas music. We tried that once, and it was quite a disappointment. For one, even though we say we get tired of hearing the same Christmas songs by the same singers over and over again, when we are introduced to Christmas songs we haven’t heard before, which tends to come with streaming, they don’t feel like Christmas to us, and we don’t have the patience to sit through them. For another thing, a big part of what makes Christmas music special is its scarcity. If we listen to it in a way we could be listening to it all year long, that’s no fun at all.
We are purists and won’t decorate a thing for Christmas until after Thanksgiving, and we certainly wouldn’t play Christmas music in a public setting where other people could hear it until then, either.
But when we are alone, we relish it.
My teenager has just gotten her driver’s permit, and I am struck with the fear of the rapid passage of time. These days of active motherhood, with a child at home, will not last forever. The end looms menacingly ahead.
In fact, as we were zooming down 220, she was telling me how one day she’d be doing the driving there. She was talking of being older – and the unspoken accompaniment, of no longer needing Mama – when suddenly Gene Autrey brought my little girl back.
“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer!” she crooned along with him, exactly as she has for all her life – “had a very shiny nose!”
When else will we hear Burl Ives, Frank Sinatra, Gene Autry, Otis Redding, Brenda Lee, Nat King Cole, Paul McCartney, Wham, The Waitresses, Harry Belafonte, The Temptations, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Johnny Mathis, Dean Martin, Jackson 5, Bruce Springsteen, The Beach Boys, the Ronettes, Karen Carpenter, Elvis Presley, The Kinks, Donny Hathaway, Eartha Kitt, Perry Como, Bobby Helms, Chuck Berry, the Eagles, Ella Fitzgerald, Jose Feliciano, Bing Crosby, Stevie Wonder, Thurl Ravenscroft, Darlene Love, Band Aid, Whitney Houston – and more for new year, Dan Fogelberg (“Same Old Lang Syne,” the New Year’s Eve song).
Alas, it also brings us the Chipmunks, the Muppets and more Mariah Carey and Celine Dion than anyone can take.
Christmas music is about Christmas, but it’s more than that. Personally speaking, it is the thread that connects all the years of our life. Culturally speaking, it keeps in our ears wonderful singers who otherwise would not be played on the radio and perhaps even would have been forgotten by time.
Ten months of the year, we are isolated by the sounds and the fads that come and go temporarily. During the two months of the year that Christmas music is played, we transcend fad and fashion to reconnect.
