When my sister and I were little, our mom always played her Andy Williams Christmas album for us during the holiday season because her mother had played the record for her when she was a kid. In our house, we started out with the cassette, then graduated to the CD. One year we ended up with two CDs because we thought we'd lost one. Anyway, we got so used to hearing it year after year that we started saying it wasn't Christmas until Andy came out.
Last Christmas was my first not living in my parents' house, so I set out to buy my own Andy CD. But it wasn't as easy as I thought it'd be. Apparently, there are lots of Andy Christmas albums. The one I knew and loved had a green background, but all I could find were one with a red background and one with a blue background. I bought them anyway and was heartened when I realized they featured some of my old favorites, such as "Happy Holiday/The Holiday Season." (How could you not love a song that proudly proclaims, "so, hoopty-do and dickory dock, don't forget to hang up your sock"?) Conversely, some of the darker and decidedly un-Christmasy tunes, such as "Little Altar Boy," were missing. Even so, there were a couple of bad apples in there. The worst was probably a version of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" I'd never heard of. Four Christmas lights? Three boughs of holly? Two candy canes? One song for the Christmas tree?! And it was all brought by "my good friends" instead of "my true love." Oh, Andy. What were you thinking? I told my sister about all of this, and at first she considered borrowing my new finds to copy. But then she decided to look for the green album on itunes instead. Probably a wise move.
Last I heard, Andy is still alive and in his nineties. Sometimes we catch him singing on some obscure station on Christmas day. Hopefully this year will be one of those occasions. In the meantime, I popped in my CDs for the first time this season today. And you know what? It really does feel a little more like Christmas.
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