A Little Christmas Day Music

Shawn Phillips - A Christmas Song

From the archives...


I first heard this song when the 45 single* was delivered to the college radio station where I was working.


From Shawn's website:

"The Christmas Song was written in a hotel room in Rome, in 1969. I can't remember what I was in Rome for, but it was close to Christmas, and I started thinking about that, and all that entailed, and I wanted to tell the story somewhat differently, and make it fun. A few months later, when we were recording Second Contribution, I played the song for Jonathan Weston, and he didn't want to waste any of the studio time we had. I was determined to get it on tape. So when he and the engineer Robin Cable went out for a dinner break, I got on the phone, and gathered together 19 musicians, and I had everyone of them set up with microphones, and had the levels set, we'd rehearsed it several times, and we were sitting in the studio, and then Jonathan, and Robin walked into the control room. I just told Robin to roll the tape. It was done in the first take."

On the recording, there's a bit of a false start. Shawn gives an infectious, joyous laugh and says "I think that's tremendous" and then launches into the song. I think I love that laughter as much as I love the song.

I posted the song in 2010. I wasn't going to post it again, but then I got an Anonymous comment on that 2010 post that made me change my mind. Let me share it with you...

I have been trying to figure out who did this song and what it was called. Thanks a million. I would also like to find the version with the false start, but I can't find the title "A Christmas Song" on Itunes, but I'm willing to sample each song to find it! I had googled "I think that's tremendous" before, but since it wasn't that unique a sentence, I got nowhere. Even adding christmas music to the search came up dry, and I eventually stopped trying. But I was looking for something else, thought I'd give it another try, and here you are. Thanks a million more times.

I can identify with that. I can think of things that I searched and searched for and pretty much given up hope of ever finding. And then, for some reason, a spark of hope wells up within you and tells you you've got nothing to lose by looking one more time, and...there it is.

"I think that's tremendous". I do, too. More now than ever. I don't always comment on the videos I post, but I did on this one, ten years ago now, and mentioned the very words that weren't in the video I posted then, the only ones our friend here knew to search for. What is it the Good Book says? Seek and ye shall find"?

I don't know what you're looking for this Christmas, but maybe it's too soon to give up looking for it now. You just never know!

Merry Christmas to you and yours! God bless us every one!

(Revised from an earlier post, with updated video)

*For those of you not born in the right century, a '45 single' refers to an analog recording on a vinyl disc, approximately 7" in diameter, with a 1.5" diameter hole in the middle, played at 45 r.p.m. on a 'record player' or 'turntable'. It had a recording on both sides. The secondary recording was on what was commonly known as the "B" side.

The storage capacity of a 45 single was probably an average of about 2 minutes per side. Your grandparents changed records a lot. On record players with an automatic spindle, you could stack 10, 45 singles, for approximately 20 minutes of semi interrupted play.

Christmas Truce of World War I -- Joyeux Noel

A short glimpse (less than 15 minutes) into how men can be convinced to stop killing each other, if only for a brief period of time.

The Other Gift of the Magi

From the archives:

It's nearly Christmas. No, not when I'm writing this, but when it will see the light of day. It's July and I'm slipping this into a time capsule for revival when the frost is on the bumpkins and the chestnuts are in the fire.

When I was a lad, about eight or nine, as I recall, twelve tops, we were living in southern Indiana. Jeffersonville. (Hopefully Thomas and not Davis, or the PC crowd will change it!) One year, my older brother and sister saw a design in some magazine for some handmade, do-it-yourself jewelry. Earrings, pins, necklaces... something like that. I vaguely remember they were made out of cork balls and a little bit of black velvet ribbon and pins through glass beads.
(Actually, they kind of put me in mind of those old WWII sea mines with all the spikes all over them, but very colorful and festive! )

I was the youngest of we three and not terrible suited for production. The big kids handled that. I was in sales. I was youngest and thereby the cutest of the bunch. (No brag, just fact!) So I was delegated to go door to door in the cold December winds and sell these bits of jewelry and perhaps some clumps of mistletoe as well, tied up with red curling ribbon.

Anyhow, out into the cruel December winter trudged I, with a sack or a wagon or some such, I don't recall, full of Christmacy merchandise to sell. 'Tis the season! My siblings had set the prices (marketing) and as I recall I did pretty well the first couple of houses. By the time I got to about the third door, the homeowner must have startled me, or I was nervous about talking to strangers, because when they opened the door they demanded "how much for the small jewelry?" For, you see, there were two sizes, a large and a small, appropriately priced, the larger sizes more than the smaller. Higher labor and material costs, don'tcha know?

For some reason, I got rattled and recited the large jewelry price for the smaller jewelry. Before I could correct myself, the homeowner agreed, paid the price and I was on my way before I fully realized what had happened. Our goods were underpriced for what the market would bear! Since I was the only member of the corporation onsite, I gave myself a small promotion to Joint marketing and Sales, and proceeded to quote the higher prices for the rest of the day.

Now as a kid, I was always good at math, and I knew how many units I had started out with and how many I had sold, and at what prices. So I subtracted the original price of the merchandise, and put the difference into pocket number one. The rest of the money went into pocket number two. Upon my return, cold, slightly frostbitten and hungry, I gave my siblings the entire contents of pocket number two.

They were delighted! Look how much money they had made, from the warmth and comfort of their own living room no less! As management, they then divided up the profits and gave me my share. An honest wage for an honest day's work! I'm sure they were thinking what a chump I was to work all day in the cold and how smart they were to have talked me into it!

I was then rewarded with a bonus for being 'Salesman of the Year', with the content of pocket number one. The awards ceremony was intimate, restricted solely to the sales force, without whom the company would not long survive.

I can't remember if I've ever told this story to my brother or sister. I'm pretty sure the statute of limitations has run out. Think I'll print this out and put it in their Christmas cards. If I live 'til New Years, I'll let you know how that worked out!

A Little Christmas Eve Music

Christmas Guitar Music - 1 Hour of Peaceful, Instrumental Christmas Carols

Vintage Babes of the Week

Tonight's Vintage Babes are in a holiday mood!

 

Die Hard Tree Topper

Come out to the coast, we’ll get together, have a few laughs…

The Poetry Corner

Here's a little poem I wrote last Decenmber when I finished putting up my Christmas decorations.
This year, I added three more strings of lights!

The lights on the house,
LEDs, they're like icicles.
(Feel like I rode 20 miles on my bicycle!)
Solar lights circle the palm tree's circumference
(Oh, yeah! Like I have a rhyme for circumference!)
The wreath on the front door is covered in bells
Decorations are done!
Joyeux Noël!

Christmas in St. Louis

Vintage Babe of the Week

Tonight's Vintage Babes are in a festive mood!

Welcome to the Club

Merry Christmas! 
If you're reading this blog on Christmas day, you either have a lot of time on your hands or you're just bored. Welcome to the Club!
Speaking of clubs...every now and then the subject of these supermarket club cards comes up, and some people get all upset over the invasion of their privacy. Personally, I don't have a problem with Safeway knowing how often I buy ground beef, what grade of beef I buy or how often I purchase green beans! I save three to six percent over their "club prices" which are way lower than the prices marked on the shelves.

But this week, I noticed an added benefit. Sort of. I got an email from them about a product they knew I'd purchased, that was subject to a recall.
The email was probably overkill, since the problem occurred recently and the purchase I made was over a month ago, but to play it safe, they shot out an email to anyone who had purchased this product.

Singing the Blues at Christmas

"There's no mistletoe hanging on my door this year.
There's no Christmas gifts scattered 'round my floor this year.
I've done all my shopping at the liquor store this year.
And I'll be drinking Christmas dinner all alone!"

44 seconds in

Donald Trump Sings 'Baby Please Come Home'

How Can We Get LESS Christ in Christmas? Methodists: Hold My Beer!

In case you haven't seen it, a Methodist church in southern California (Rev. Karen Clark Ristine, pastor) decided they needed to make Christmas more politically relevant this year.

Every year, around this time, the Left begins to take some small interest in the Christmas story. However, they insist on recasting Mary and Joseph as "homeless", or more recently as "illegal immigrants". Balderdash! (Note: If Joe Biden is listening, you can use that in your campaign!) On Twitter, (don't get me started) one budding Scriptural scholar wannabee said that the "real villain" of this piece wasn't King Herod, but rather the greedy innkeeper, who could not find a room for a very pregnant woman.

Let's inject just the tiniest bit of logic here. (The tiniest bit being all that some on the Left are able to absorb) But if you look at the most reliable record of the time, we see this

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.(And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:)

Did you catch that? There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.
Tax.
All.
The.
World.

Scholars are of a conflicting mind whether or not this makes Augustus the first liberal Democrat or not. But in typical bureaucratic fashion, and not willing for any income to slip through the cracks, compelled everyone in the known world to return to the city of their birth. Not "Everyone whose last name begins with 'Aleph' through 'Mem' show up on Thursday, and everyone 'Nun' through 'Tau' the week after. No. It was everybody show up, or face the displeasure of the Roman Empire.

Why else would a man take his nine month pregnant wife on a journey of 70 -90 miles, on foot and donkey, to show up at such and such a time? Even our relatively benign IRS would have issued him an extension if he asked. But, no. Rome must be obeyed.

The most direct route from Nazareth to Bethlehem was probably too rough, with roving bands of brigands, and just how fast do you think Joseph could travel, leading a donkey with his very pregnant wife on it? And you ladies can back me up on this one, but bouncing around on a donkey's back, with a baby kicking at your greatly diminished bladder, about how many times a day do you think they had to stop just for bathroom breaks? I'm thinking a week and a half minimum for the journey!

Imagine if you would, that the government decreed the census would be done differently this year. Everyone who has ever been born there, in the last hundred years, return to the city of your birth, and wait in line until the government gets around to counting you. If everyone born in New York City, or Houston, or New Orleans for the last hundred years showed up in town...how long do you think it would take until the hotels and motels were all full? Not because inn keepers are evil, but the sheer magnitude of bureaucratic incompetence and greed that ordained it would overwhelm almost any city on the planet. Then imagine them all lined up on the steps of city hall, because it was no skin off Caesar Augustus' nose how long you had to travel, or stand in line, because you were a cash cow to be milked for taxes.

Homeless? Joseph was a carpenter in Nazareth. He provided for his family. After the baby was born, some of the census crowd cleared back and the housing shortage was alleviated. Matthew 2: 9-11

"...The star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshiped him." (emphasis mine)

How about the "illegal immigrant" moniker? Anything to that? The lefties are hanging their collective hats on this passage, in Matthew 2: 12 -14

"(The Wise men)... being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way. And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him. When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt..."

So, because Joseph traveled to Egypt, undocumented, as it were, then there must be no difference between them and undocumented illegal aliens who cross the border into the US! Nothing at all indicates that there was anything illegal in that, although I am willing to concede that any illegal alien who can produce undeniable evidence that the angel of the Lord commanded them to come here, I am perfectly willing to make the exception!

The story of the Nativity of Christ is not about Donald Trump. Or Barack Obama who maintained if not built the "cages". It's not even about the failure of the legislature to pass new legislation to try to fix the problems on the border. It's about the entrance of the Christ into the world, who would save His people from their sin. When churches lose sight of that, they do idiotic things like the one pictured above.

Christmas Eve Babes

Since we had a double dose of vintage babes last week, here's a little Christmas eye candy to make up for it.

Allan Sherman - The Twelve Gifts Of Christmas

For all of you folks to young to have heard the original...

A Little Saturday Night Music

Christmas Dinner -Noel Paul Stookey

Christmas In Killarney

Bing Crosby - Christmas In Killarney

Green Christmas

Green Christmas - Stan Freberg

Friday Night Vintage Babes

In lieu of a FNB*, we're having an encore of vintage Christmas babes.

(*a.k.a. Rule Five Friday)!

Vintage Babes of the Week

Tonight's Vintage Babes are in a festive mood!