A live concert performance of Santa Claus is Coming to Town by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.
Since tiny, teenage Brenda Lee belted out Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree in 1958 there has been a mixed bag of Rock & Roll Christmas music. That song had the edge of being co-written by Christmas music specialist Johnny Marks, the creator of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. There have been a lot of shots fired at the elusive goal of becoming a seasonal perennial but there have been way more misses than hits. Although not so ubiquitous as country music stars'Christmas albums, plenty of rockers from Elvis Presley to some death metal bands have tried to get into the game.
Brenda Lee ushered in the era of Rock and Roll Christmas Songs.
In the ‘50s and early ‘60s the most successful holiday sides were basically novelty tunes like Lee’s. Notably successes included Chuck Berry’s Run, Run Rudolph, rockabilly BobbyHelms’ Jingle Bell Rock, and the Beach Boys’ recasting The Little Duce Coup into The Little Saint Nick.
But that began to change in 1963 with Phil Spector’s wall of sound Christmas album. It notably included Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) by Darlene Love which Rolling Stone rated as the greatest Rock Christmas song of all time. Unfortunately the album dropped on the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated and was swamped nearly to oblivion. None of the songs on the album charted originally. Over time the album and the song became cult favorites. It got a huge boost in 1986 when David Letterman featured Love belting out the song on his final new episode before Christmas. He made it a tradition that lasted 27 years with ever more elaborate productions.
Darlene Love over the years in her annual performance of Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) onDavid Letterman's shows.
The Beatles got into Christmas music with annual almost throw away ditties meant as audio Christmas cards to fans. Later both John Lennon and Paul McCartney had their own holiday hits. Lennon’s Happy Xmas (The War is Over) in 1971 was a great rocking protest song and was produced by Phil Spector. In 1979 McCartney stuck gold with Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time, which has made it to Christmas radio play lists but has also been derided as “the worst Christmas song of all time.” Believe me, it isn’t as long as Dominick the Donkey or The Christmas Shoes still turn up.
John Lennon's great Christmas protest song.
For sheer star power and more than a dollop of self-importance nothing matches Irish rocker Bob Geldoph’s assembly of Rock and Pop superstars on Do They Know its Christmas in 1984 to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia.
Mariah Cary’s diva performance on All I Want For Christmas Is You became the first new Christmas song in years to become a seasonal standard in 1994. The infectious earworm finally passed Bing Crosby’s White Christmas as the most played holiday song on radio as well as the biggest seller.
There are undoubtedly others that deserve mention. But for sheer raw Rock & Roll power nothing matches the 1975 live recording of Santa Claus is Coming to Town by Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band including Little Stevie—Steve Van Zant—and saxophonist Clarence Clemmons. There is something playful and joyful in this rocker.
Not only was Eddie Cantor's record a huge hit but 500,000 copies of the sheet music flew off the shelves within a day of his first performance of Santa Claus is Coming to Town on his radio show.
The song long predated Rock & Roll. It was written by J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie and became a huge hit for Eddie Cantor after he featured it on his weekly radio program in 1934. It has been recorded by over 200 artists, including Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters, The Crystals, Frank Sinatra, The Temptations, The Jackson 5, Mariah Carey, Neil Diamond, Chris Isaak, and Michael Bublé. It was also the title song of the Rankin and Bass 1970 animated TV special with Fred Astaire narrating the origin of Santa Claus.
The song is also the penultimate pop children’s Advent tune awaiting the much anticipated arrival of St. Nick himself.
Bruce Springsteen finishes his live performances in November and December with Santa Claus is Coming to Town. The audiences sing along and the jams can go on for a long time.
For sheer infectious ebullience, Springsteen’s version blasts all others out of the water.
(There's No Place Like) Home for the Holidays--The Carpenters.
Note—The first of a string of two-fers as we reach the peak of the season.
We’ll celebrate what may or may not be the busiest travel day of the holiday season this year with a classic American popular Christmas song by Robert Allen with lyrics by Al Stillman written in 1954. Perry Como had a huge hit with (There’s No Place Like) Home for the Holidays which has become an oft recorded classic. But no one sang it better than Karen Carpenter.
An Old Fashion Christmas including Home for the Holidays was released after Karen Carpenter's death.
This song is best classified under the secular urban Advent popular holiday music. Although it sprawls far and wide from city sidewalks it shares the same contemporary feel of post-World War II America with a swinging, spritely style. It evokes nostalgia without ever getting much more specific than a passing reference to “homemade pumpkin pie” with just repeated references to home. And even home is not well defined—no reference to mom and dad, the old folks, a farm, village, or city neighborhood. Home is whatever place you feel connected to in some deep way and whatever family of blood or choice offers welcome.
The “Holidays” were not very specific either. No mention of Christmas, Hannukah, or New Years. Maybe Thanksgiving qualified. Which is why the propagators of War on Christmas nonsense should hate this song if they give it a second thought.
Driving home for the Holidays way out West where your scribe came from circa 1952.
A generation or two earlier most Americansgrew up and stayed in the place of their birth or its immediate environs which usually was well stocked with a wide circle of extended family. But two World Wars, the Great Depression, post-war prosperity, and transportation revolutions had changed that for a great many folks. The new normal was going away to college or entering the military after high school graduation and then finding a job someplace else and establishing a new nuclear family. People were expected to go where opportunity beckoned and the corporate culture of the time often required frequent relocations. Even if you stayed in the same state or general vicinity of “home” chances are that you lived in one of the new sprawling suburbs not the old nabe.
After the war and with the new prosperity, the automobile and modern highways had supplanted the railroads as the main means of getting wherever you were going. So Home for the Holidays is a song about driving. If it had been written a decade later with jet air travel at a cost that many could afford, the song might have mentioned busy airports and the places cited might have been too far apart for a day or so road trip. It was very much a song of its time.
It still works for us, at least for geezers like me, because it makes us nostalgic for that time. But also, because many of us still have a home we go to for the Holidays—or are the home to which our progeny and descendants come.
Home for the Holidays was re-recorded in stereo in 1959 for Como's RCA album.
Como released the song on RCA Victor accompanied by Mitchell Ayres’ Orchestra and the Ray Charles Singers. He showcased it on a Christmas TV special helping to establish that as a long running holiday tradition. Each edition of the Como Christmas show was sure to feature his biggest holiday hit. The song registered at #8 on the Cash Box magazinetop 50 and made the charts again the next year when it was re-released. In 1959 Como with the same back-up recorded a new stereo version with a slightly different arrangement by Joe Lipman. It was successfully released as a single by RCA Victor and included on the top selling album Season’s Greetings from Perry Comoas well as on numerous compilation albums. This is the version commonly heard on Christmas radio and is licensed for TV commercials.
It is also the version that The Carpenters adapted for their 1974 album Christmas Portrait and included on their 1984 LP An Old Fashioned Christmas which was released after Karen’s death.
O Come O Come Emmanuel by Irish New Age diva Enya.
Today is the Fourth Sunday of Advent and time to share the most famous of all Advent hymns, O Come, O Come Emmanuel which also has some of the oldest roots. As a boy it always perplexed me—who the hell was this Emmanuel, what did he have to do with Christmas, and how did Israel become involved?
It turns out that Emmanuel—from Hebrew meaning “God is With Us” is mentioned almost in passing in the Old Testament Book of Book of Isaiah connected to a war between the Kingdom of Judea and an Assyrian Empire with its vassal the Kingdom of Israel in 735-734 BCE. One verse said, “The Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” The name, is mentioned a second time that the lands of the “two kings you dread” will be laid waste before the child is old enough to “reject the wrong and choose the right.” Neither Isaiah nor Jewish scholars connected these prophecies to those predicting the coming of a Messiah.
But early Christians did, or at least the unknown author the Gospel of Matthew did when an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream. Joseph was about to end his betrothal to teenage Mary because she was carrying the child of another and told him the child’s divine origin was the fulfillment of Scripture.
Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.
So, by these slender threads hung the notion that Emmanuel was another name for Jesus who was also the Messiah, Savior of Humankind, and Son of God.
An Orthodox icon of Emmanuel from 1688.
The text of the song we know was originally written in Latin and paraphrased O antiphons, a series of plainchant antiphons attached to the Magnificat at Vespers over the final days before Christmas. The hymn has its origins over 1,200 years ago in monastic life in the 8th or 9th Century. Seven days before Christmas Eve monks would sing the O antiphons in anticipation of Christmas Eve when the eighth antiphon, O Virgo virginum (O Virgin of Virgins) would be sung before and after Mary’s Canticle, the Magnificat (Luke 1:46b-55).
John Mason Neal, the English translator for the most commonly used version of O Come, O Come Emmanuel.
The words and the music of O come, O come, Emmanuel developed separately. A Latin text was first documented in Germany in 1710, but the tune most familiar in the English-speaking world had its origins in 15th Century France. The 1851 translation by John Mason Neale from Hymns Ancient and Modern is the most prominent by far in the English-speaking world, but other English translations also exist. Anywhere from four to eight verses are attached to the melody. The hymn text was embraced both a Romantic interest in poetic beauty, Medieval exoticism, and a concern for matching hymns to liturgical seasons and functions rooted in the Oxford Movement of the Church of England. Despite this pedigree a seven verse version was not included in the official hymnal of the Episcopal Church in the United States. Catholics, Lutherans, and many other Protestant denominations include versions and variants in their hymnals.
Enya--Eithne Pádraigín Ní Bhraonáin Anglicizedas Enya Patricia Brennan
The hymn is now a choral set piece at many Advent services and Christmas concerts. But today we are featuring a lovely solo version by Irish New Age singer Enya.
Jethro Tull's Ring Out the Solstice Bells by Ian Anderson.
Call it Solstice, Yule, Meán Geimhridh, or any name you choose, it is the longest night of the year—the official beginning of Winter. Tomorrow the Sun begins its annual return. Despite claims otherwise, Solstice is the Reason for the Season—the overt or disguised inspiration of most Northern Hemisphere Festivals of Light clustered around this date. To celebrate we turn to Jethro Tull’s classic 1977 album Songs from the Woods, Ian Anderson’s turn from jazz-infused rock to an embrace of his English roots and folk identities is a fitting carol for the day.
Today, the Solstice—the moment in the Northern Hemisphere when has its maximum tilt away from the Sun will occur at 3:21 CST. You can calculate it for your time zone.
The Holly King rules in the Germanic Yule celebration at Solstice.
In most so-called pagan traditions around the Northern Hemisphere there were two ways to celebrate the Solstice. Some lit fires in the darkest night to summon the return of the Sun. Others gathered at dawn to in some way capture the first light of that return. The latter often involved human construction on or in which that light would strike a significant stone or altar. Think pyramids in Egypt and the pre-Columbian Americas, Stonehenge, Greek temples, medicine wheels, certain Medieval Cathedrals, and far simpler wooden structures in Northern Europe and Siberia. Either way, those who observe or re-create such rituals have found a way to do so.
Even if you do not observe the pagan doings—or shun them as the Devil’s work—chances are that you to have been or will be celebrating the solstice yourself.
Buried in traditional folklore, swathed in symbolism, and steeped in metaphor, Christmas and Hannukah share the same impulses as Yule and its Celtic and ancient British cousin, Meán Geimhridh beloved by contemporary neo-pagans of one stripe or another. At their core there was in each of them a physical or metaphorical re-kindling of the light at the darkest hour of the year offering a glimmering of hope at a time of cold and starvation.
The Moon Goddess is the spirit of Solstice in Celtic-based modern neo-paganism.
Archeological evidence shows that the event—the shortest day and longest night of the year, when the Sun’s daily maximum elevation in the sky is the lowest—was marked, often using physical constructions to capture the rising sun, in Neolithic times across widely separated cultures in Europe, the Near East, Asia, and North America. Stonehenge is just the most famous example.
English Druids and other neo-pagans celebrate the winter solstice annually at dawn at Stonehenge.
While the trappings of Christmas—the Yule log, the holly and the ivy, the Christmas tree, mistletoe, wassailing, and other customs are commonly known to be borrowed from pagan celebrations, the metaphor of the birth of the Son, bringing light and salvation to the world is often overlooked. Among still nervous orthodox Christians, drawing parallels to pagan belief is still actively discouraged.
Ring out Solstice Bells was included on Jethro Tull's 1977 album Songs from the Woods featuring Ian Anderson.
Ian Anderson is a Scottish born multi-instrumentalist and singer best known as the creative force behind the innovative and influential British folk/jazz/fusion/progressive rock band Jethro Tull. Many of the band’s best known songs evoke a magical, even mystical spirit. That is certainly the case in Ring Out Solstice Bells featuring percussion and Anderson’s signature flute.
White Christmas from the finale of the 1954 MGM film of the same name.
Tomorrow Kathy Brady-Murfin and I will be taking in perhaps the most iconic of the classic Golden Age of American Secular Christmas songs, a production of the stage version of Irving Berlins’s White Christmas at the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire. It was at least the third production of a version of the classic film we have seen. It is a staple of both the professional and community holiday theater. It is both comfortable and an invitation to sing along.
The leads in the Marriott Theater production of Irving Berlin's White Christmas.
You probably know that the most played and beloved secular American Christmas song—White Christmas—was first featured in the 1942 movie musical Holiday Inn. It was not one of the elaborate production numbers but was a simple parlor piano duet by Bing Crosby and Marjorie Reynolds. It was not expected to be a hit, but it struck a deep chord with American GIs far from home. The rest is history.
The idea of a film based on a country inn that opened as an entertainment venue only on holidays was Irving Berlin’s own. So was the idea of writing original songs for each holiday. Eventually he penned 12 new songs including White Christmas and another soon-to-be seasonal classic Happy Holidays. Also included in the film was Easter Parade, written by Berlin for the 1933 Broadway revue As Thousands Cheer.
Berlin signed with Paramount Pictures in 1940 to write the songs for a film based on his story idea. The studio intended it to showcase its most bankable star—Bing Crosby. The studio signed Mark Sandrich, who helmed four of the great Fred Astaire-Ginger Rodgers musicals at RKO. He brought Astaire along, on loan from his studio for a dream team matchup of two of the biggest movie musical stars.
White Christmas was introduced in 1942'sIrving Berlin's Holiday Inn.
Casting the female lead was trickier. Paramount, not the richest of studios, already faced a big payroll with its stars, Irving Berlin and Sandrich plus the costs of the elaborate production numbers, could not afford an A list star who they would have likely had to borrow from a major studio. After rummaging around the role of Linda Mason, the fresh-faced wanna-be performer, went to Marjorie Reynolds, a starlet rather than a star, who had mostly worked in two-reel Westerns with the likes of Tex Ritter and young Roy Rogers. Famous or not Reynolds, turned out to be a lovely singer and accomplished dancer who had no trouble keeping up with the men.
The second female lead went to an even lesser known performer, Virginia Dale, a former Miss California and a hoofer as the faithless Lila Dixon.
The film premiered on August 4, 1942 and was an immediate hit—Paramount’s top grossing film of the year. It easily returned its hefty $3.2 million budget. The music from the show also did well. As expected the Valentine’s Day romantic ballad Be Careful, It’s My Heart did well even if it never exactly became a Berlin standard. But White Christmas really took off after a slow start breaking into the Billboard chart in late October and staying at or near the top for the next 11 weeks. It went on to win the 1943 Academy Award for Best Song.
The Decca Records studio recordings of songs from the film was issued in a 78 rpm album but did not include the original female stars. White Christmas from this album was later released as a single and became a legendary success.
Crosby’s studio recording of the song originally included in a Decca 78 rpm album of songs from the show was released as a single and sold so briskly that it damaged the master recording and Crosby had to go back in the studio to rerecord it in 1947. That version easily became a #1 hit and is the one most heard today. In 1949 Crosby included it in his Merry Christmas album which has never gone out of issue. It became the title song of the 1954 Technicolor filmWhite Christmas starring Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Danny Kay, and Vera-Ellen, another all-Irving Berlin musical that became a holiday classic of its own.
Crosby in his Santa hat graced the covers of countless LPs, singles, and CDs.
Taken together sales the 1942 and ’47 versions of the song are estimated 50 million copies, the most by any release and the biggest-selling single worldwide of all time. It returned to the Billboard Pop Chart twenty times before the magazine created a distinct Christmas chart for seasonal releases. It retained it’s top Christmas recording status until Maria Carey’s ubiquitous All I Want for Christmas is You.
White Christmas is also the most recorded song of all time with over 500 covers by other artists, several of which became hits in their own right.
The Tree of Life Unitarian Universalist Congregation, 5603 Bull Valley Road in McHenry has a plateful of Winter holidays services and celebrations set. It will celebrate reverently and joyfully the traditional, sacred, and secular of the season of light reborn.
First is Kindling the Embers of Presence a Solstice Service on Saturday, December 21 at 7:30 pm. Welcome the longest night with poetry, music, song, dance, and drums. This participatory evening will rekindle appreciation for the darkness, reconnect us to the Web of all Existence, and prepare us for the return of the light. The gathering will mark the end of the shortest day of the year and welcome us to set intentions as we look forward to new beginnings. This service will be in person at the church building only.
Next is a special joint musical program on Sunday, December 22 by Tree of Life and its sister Congregation Prairie Circle UU Congregation in Grayslake with Chaplain Dave Becker, who serves both congregations. Combined vocal choirs under the direction of Beth Hoover and the Handbell choirs under the direction of Joyce DeWitt of Tree of Life and Prairie Circle with the Tree of Life Woodwind Ensemble and guest musicians will offer a wide selection of secular holiday songs, traditional carols, and songs for Hannukah and Solstice. A reception with refreshments will follow. This service will begin at 10 am at the church building and it will also be available on Zoom.
A Candlelight service at Tree of Life UU in McHenry.
Christmas Eve, this year on Tuesday, December 24, is always a magical time at Tree of Life. The annual Candlelight Service is a highlight of the season. Chaplain Dave will lead Heaven and Nature Sing: A Christmas Eve Celebration for All at 7:15. It will be a time for wondering, a time for singing, a time for holding the sacred with one another leading to lighting candles hand to hand through the sanctuary singing Silent Night. It is a perfect time for new visitors and guests who wish to be with open-hearted people respectful of a variety of religious expression on the special night. Also on Zoom.
Sunday, December 29 will be Sharing Presence, Embracing the Future, a special relax and unwind service at 10:45 on Zoom only. An intimate, comfortable, and interactive experience of readings and music and a time of community and reflection.
Celebrate New Year’s Eve at Tree of Life with a special event. On December 31 come gather for an evening of music and games before ringing in the New Year. The event starts at 4 pm, with a “midnight”ball drop at 6 pm (London time), and closes at 6:30 pm. Get safely home and cozy. This year’s theme is Decades. Revelers are encouraged to dress from their favorite decade. Bring a small bite appetizer or dessert to share. There will be punch and sparkling apple juice. Adult beverages will be available at the bar for a cash donation. Family friendly. Children are welcome, but no childcare will be provided.
We interrupt the seasonal songs of Winter Holidays Music Festival for a more private celebration if you don’t mind. Forty three years ago, on a below zero December 19, 1981 at Chicago’s St. Francis Xavier Church on the North Side Kathy Brady-Larsen, a young widow, consented to marry beneath her. The groom was a scruffy no-account with dim prospects named Patrick Murfin.
That summer we had renewed an old acquaintance at Consumer’s Tap on Lincoln Avenue. We had a nodding acquaintance a decade earlier while I was on the staff of the Chicago Seed and she was a 17 year old Seedstreet seller who shared an apartment with other members of the staff collective. We were re-introduced by Kathy’s best friend since childhood and another staff member, Mary Kay Ryan.
In the interim Kathy had married Randy Larson and had been left a widow with two small children. Carolynne was 9 years old and Heather just 6. They lived in a Greystone two flat on Albany Street half a block north of Diversey. She was working in customer service for Recycled Paper Products, the alternative greeting card company.
I had recently recovered from a period of actual homelessness and was living in a single room in a building on Fullerton west of Lincoln. It was the kind of place with a bathroom down the hall next to a pay phone. It was furnished with a Murphy bed, a table, two straight chairs, a sink, and a roving herd of cockroaches. I was working as a second shift custodian at the trade school Coyne American Institute a few blocks down Fullerton and mucking out Consumers for a couple of hours after closing every night.
After a brief whirlwind courtship, Kathy invited me to move in with her on Albany mostly to avoid having to pass through the rat infested alley behind Consumers to get to my building.
In early fall I took a trip to Kimberly City, Missouri where my parentsW. M. and Ruby Irene Murfin had retired. Just after I arrived my mother died in the hospital after a long illness. I numbly endured a memorial service and together with my twin brother Peter, formerly Timothy, we buried her ashes on top her mother’s grave in Martinstown, Missouri. On the long bus ride back to Chicago I did a lot of thinking about life and family. When I got back to our apartment very late one night, I proposed to Kathy as we sat at the kitchen table. To my astonishment, she agreed.
We decided to do it sooner than later and set the December date because the girls would be getting out of school for Christmas break. We had to make hasty arrangements on very little money. Kathy found an ivory formal gown trimmed in lace, probably intended as a prom dress, at a Polish clothing store on Milwaukee Avenue for $20 or so. I got a brown hand-me-down suit from my father. We had custom wedding bands hand made by a local silver smith for $60. A bartender from Consumer’s was opening her own saloon, Lilly’s, a bit up Lincoln and she agreed to let us have our reception there for free. I had invitations illustrated by my IWW fellow worker Carlos Cortez printed on the sly at the Coyne American print shop. We found a blues band called Whiskey River to play for a few dollars in hopes of getting a regular gig from Lilly’s.
Kathy's parish church, St. Francis Xavier on Chicago's Northwest side, since twice consolidated and now closed.
Luckily the assistant pastor of St. Francis was a close friend of Kathy’s and dispensed with the pre-cana counseling and ignored my unchurched agnosticism. I had only gotten over my ni deo, ni patron period of actually drunkenly pissing on churches a few years before but my Wobbly friends were betting the church would collapse on my head when I walked down the aisle.
We assembled an unusual wedding party. Kathy’s matron of honor was her close friend and former mother-in-lawPat Kressel. My best man was 81 year old Fred W. Thompson, my mentor in the IWW and my co-author of The IWW Its First Seventy Years: 1905-1975. Carolynne and Heather were included in the party and got to pick out their own dresses.
The Wedding Party.
Preparations at the Albany apartment were hectic that morning and I tried to remain calm. Amid the chaos, my main concern was that I would not make the classic sit-com mistake of forgetting the rings. I didn’t, but in the rush I left the wedding license on the dining room table, which was not discovered until after Pat Kressel ferried us to the church in her car. Someone had to be rapidly dispatched to retrieve the document.
In front of a few dozen family and friends we finally walked up the aisle. We wrote our own vows and I had some trouble getting the ring on Kathy’s finger. Due to my heathen status, there was no Mass. Just like that, after signing the license, we were married.
The bride and groom.
We returned to the apartment for a wedding dinner catered by Brown’s Chicken. The place was packed by Kathy’s large family, most of whom I did not yet know. I secretly called them the Polish Army. On my side there was just my father and his new girlfriend, my mom’s former caregiver Rae Jane Mason, my Aunt Millie and Uncle Norm Strom, and my cousin Linda, my playmate from childhood. After the food was cleared there was time for a Brady family tradition—a game or two of nickel-pot Thirty-one. And some Christian Brothers Brandy shots with Kathy’s grandmother, father, and Uncle Al.
The wedding reception doubled as the opening night of Lilly's, a Lincoln Avenue saloon and music venue opened by a former bartender at my old regular hang out, Consumer's Tap.
The reception at Lilly’s was lively and crowded. It doubled as the bar’s opening night, so strangers wandered in and mingled with the celebrants. I had sprung for a half-keg at the bar, which didn’t last long but folks forked over their own cash for more suds or shots. The band was loud and people got up to dance, even Kathy’s grandmother who was more used to polkas. The girls and their cousins observed the general cavorting from an upstairs balcony. I, of course, drank too much.
Finally, it was time to cut the sheet cake ordered from a Milwaukee Avenue bakery and decorated with a hand-blown glass heart created by an Albany Street neighbor. We opened a pile of gifts and my suit pocket was stuffed with envelopes of cash. Around midnight we tottered out of the saloon. I had an armload of gifts and managed to break the cake topper. I was, of course, embarrassingly drunk. So much for wedding night romance.
After 43 years, ups and downs, and a lifetime of family adventures Kathy and I are still together. Astonishing!
Vera Lynn, the World War II British thrush and sweetheart had a hit with The Anniversary Waltz across the Puddle.
In honor of the occasion, I dedicate The Anniversary Waltz to Kathy even though we bopped to blues jams. The song was written by Dave Franklin with lyrics by Al Dubin in 1941. It was first recorded by the ubiquitous Bing Crosby but was only a minor hit. It did better across the puddle when it was recorded by British thrush Vera Lynn and connected with war-time audiences. Connie Francis later had a hit with the song and Desi Arnez as Ricky Ricardo sang it to his wife in the the I Love LucyepisodeHollywood Anniversary. If it was good enough for Lucy, I hope it’s good enough for Kathy.
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas sung by Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis.
We are closing in on the big day and it’s way past time to honor the greatest performance of a modern secular Christmas song ever. Period. No arguments. The crown goes to Judy Garland singing Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas to Margaret O’Brien in the 1944 film classic Meet Me in St. Louis.
In some ways the part of the second daughter Esther of the comfortably middle class St. Louis Smith family was a step back for Garland to the juvenile roles where she had gained fame. She had finally broken through being cast as a young woman in Presenting Lilly Mars. Now she was back to playing a love struck high school girl.
On the other hand, producer Arthur Freed was planning to make the biggest MGM musical to date in Technicolor and directed by studio ace Vincent Minelli. In addition to Garland and O’Brien—the most popular child star since Shirley Temple, the cast included Mary Astor as Mother, Leon Ames as Father, Louise Bremmer as older sister Rose, and Tom Drake as the boy next door. It also featured solid support by veteran character actors Henry Davenport, Marjorie Main, and Chill Wills.
The film was adapted from auto-biographical short stories by Sally Benson, originally published in The New Yorker. It was divided into a series of seasonal vignettes, starting with Summer 1903 of a year in the life of the Smith family in St. Louis, leading up to the opening of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition—the St. Louis World’s Fair in the spring of 1904.
Journeyman songwriters Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane were commissioned to write songs for the film, although other composers were also expected to add numbers including Boys and Girls Like You and Me by Rodgers & Hammerstein originally written for their Broadway musical Oklahoma! but cut prior to its opening. The same fate befell the song when Minnelli reluctantly cut it because the film was running long. Martin and Blane’s contributions became American classics and standards—The Trolley Song, The Boy Next Door and of course the Christmas song all sung by Garland.
Judy Garland herself intervened to demand important changes to the lyric of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. Martin’s original lyrics began, “Have yourself a merry little Christmas / It may be your last / Next year we may all be living in the past.” She recognized that it was way too depressing to sing to the inconsolable child mourning the imminent departure of the family from St. Louis to New York City. “I’ll look like a sadist,” Garland complained. The words were changed to the now familiar “Have yourself a merry little Christmas/Let your heart be light/From now on your troubles will be out of sight.”
Garland was never more appealing or vulnerable than in this famous serenade.
A performer herself since the age of 3 and understanding the pressure that stage parents and the studio put children through, Garland formed a special protective bond with young Margaret O’Brien and spent much of her time off camera with the girl. It was a memory they would both treasure and often talk about.
Garland never looked lovelier than she did in this film with her hair dyed auburn and smitten director Minnelli literally caressed her face on screen. The young actress and the middle aged director fell in love on the set and were soon married.
Many other versions of the song have been recorded. Frank Sinatra had lyricist Martin revise the words to “lighten them up” from the still melancholy version sung by Garland for his 1957 album A Jolly Christmas. The only version to come near to the power of Garland’s performance was by Karen Carpenter in the 1978 album Christmas Portrait nearly—but not quite—matched the original.
The Feast of Saturnalia--A Roman Slave's Carol is a festive tune from the Asholean Latin Inscriptions project and members of Oxford University Faculty of Classics.
Today marks the first day of Saturnalia, the famously lascivious Roman harvest and solstice festival. It was first celebrated on this date—accounting for a couple of changes of calendars—in 496 BC. Saturnalia was the Roman Feast of Saturn, the god of Harvest, and a dies festus, a legal holiday when no public business could be conducted. At various points during the Republic and Empirefestivities extended over seven, three, and finally five days.
For a long time, all I knew about Saturnalia was that when I was in Cheyenne East High School the Latin Club nerds plastered the school with posters reading Io Saturnalia! Which roughly translated to “way to go, big fella!” or something. They also had a slave auction fundraiser in the lunchroom where leering gym teachers bought the comeliest girls and likeliest boys draped in their mothers’ bed sheets. Kind of creepy, when you think about it.
Saturnalia cavorting in a Roman wall fresco.
But as a student of all things religious, I have since learned a thing or two about it.
Saturnalia is just one of the many festivals common in Europe and elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere around the period of the solstice. Unlike others, it was a harvest festival, which seems strange until you remember that Rome not only had a pleasant Mediterranean climate but was in a period of historic warming prior the Little Ice Age, the onset of which helped plunge the continent into the Dark Ages. But that’s another story.
Saturn Eating his Son by Fracisco Goya.
The public ritual of the holiday was observed at the Temple of Saturn, one of the most important buildings in the Forum. A lectisternium, a ceremonial couch, was set up before the Temple and the statue of Saturn was unbound—the rest of the year he was tied up because of his unfortunate habit of eating people. He was depicted as a semi-depraved old man caring a harvesting scythe. Christians would later adapt that image to Father Time associated with the celebration of the New Year. A feast was laid out for the god before the couch so that he wouldn’t get hungry and revert to his nasty cannibalism.
The public ritual and spectacle aside what made Saturnalia especially popular with Roman plebeians and the large population of slaves were the carnival-like traditions. Customs from the earlier Greek Festival of Dionysus—the Roman Bacchus—were incorporated into the celebrations.
Public cavorting and sexual hijinks
were notorious features of Saturnalia in a painting by Ernesto Biodoni.
A good time was had by all.
Social norms of the rest of the year were set aside. Private parties and public revelry were the order of the day. Restrictions on gambling were loosened and even slaves could try their luck at games such as casting knuckle bones, many trying to win enough money to buy their freedom. Exchanging small gifts—saturnalia et sigillaricia—either made by hand or purchased at special holiday markets was a highlight. Slaves were exempted from punishment by their masters, in theory at least.
The most telling was the turn-about feature of the celebration. Slaves and common laborers were supposed to be served feasts by their masters and were free to express disrespect. Sometimes complete role reversal was practiced.
A fresco of another popular Saturnalia tradition--gambling--was found in the buried ruins of Pompeii.
With the rules of public decorum suspended, it was a very good time for wine merchants and public drunkenness was common. So were sexual hi-jinks, including usually forbidden mixing among classes, master and slave.
After
250 AD Saturnalia was subsumed into the new Festival of Sol Invictus
decreed by Emperor Aurelian in celebrations of a Sun cult. The return
of the sun on December 25 was a high point of the multi day
celebration. Although the original Saturnalia ended before that date a
confusion about the two Roman holidays led to the popular misconception
that the early Church "stole" December 25 for it celebration of the
birth of Christ.
Around 250 AD Emperor Aurelian created the new official cult of Sol Invictus, a Sun deity which may have borrowed from the Persian warrior cult of Mithra, ans celebrated the return of the Sun on December 25, just after the conclusion of Saturnalia.
This led to the often told tale is that the early Christians, still persecuted, hid their celebration of the Feast of the Nativity during Saturnalia to avoid detection. The trouble was that the date for that celebration was not yet fixed. In fact, it was often celebrated in the Spring—the lambing season when shepherds would have been in the fields on the lookout for wolves. Even when Christmas was settled on December 25, it was two days after the customary end of Saturnalia but did coincide with the feast of Sol Invictus. Later Emperors began to suppress the Sun festival with the rise of Christianity, around 390 AD. The first written reference to a festival of Natalis Invicti was the Philocalian calendar of 354. But a spring celebration of the nativity persisted more generally for another 100 years by which time the Festival of Sol Invictus was banned and reduced to a rural folk celebration.
The early Church did seem to want to mount a feast or festival that competed with the pagan solstice festivals and to which locals could adapt some of their beloved customs. At the same time, the Church went through periods of vigorously trying to stamp out vestiges of those same pagan festivals. For this reason, the exchange of gifts was outlawed through much of the early Middle Ages.
But customs did persist. Although most of the trapping of Christmas were borrowed from the Nordic Yule, Celtic, and Druidic customs, the cultural influence of Rome’s long occupation of Britain can be seen in the carnival-like observation of Christmas there up to the Puritan era which included the same role-reversals, public revelry, and drinking. The vestiges of it can be seen on Boxing Day, when masters give presents to servants and often serve them meals on the day after Christmas.
Today’s song, The Feast of Saturnalia–A Roman Slave’s Carol was created as a tongue-in-cheek joke by the scholarly Ashmolean Latin Inscriptions Project and members of Oxford University Faculty of Classics.
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