Ho, ho, hope you had a Merry Christmas! Did you take in a Christmas show this year, at the theater, concert, church, or somewhere else? I saw the MPAC Christmas show (of course) and the annual Christmas pageant at my church. Mikayla and her sister Mackenzie were in the pageant and Mackenzie was in the MPAC show, so I was also doing my parental duty. I really would have liked to take in a few more shows, but too much time working and not enough $$ took care of that.
I will miss the Christmas music on the radio. WMRC 1490 AM turns much of its programming over to holiday music and plays some tunes that are not just the Mariah Carey/Justin Bieber "All I Want for Christmas is You". The Milford Patch had a story about how most radio stations experience big increases in audience size when playing Christmas music. Several years ago one radio station tried keeping the Christmas format year-round but had to quit after a few months. Guess that songs about "dashing through the snow" aren't that popular during mud season.
New Year's Day is coming up, so I recommend viewing the Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine in "The Apartment" for the New Year's Eve scene. I vaguely remember hearing in my long ago youth about the big parties that drew rooms and bars full of revelers, but watching Jack Lemmon trying to negotiate his way through a massively overcrowded New York party scene inspires claustrophic shivers down my spine!
One of my favorite holiday songs is Dan Fogelberg's Same Old Auld Syne. The story takes place on Christmas Eve, but the melancolic feeling comes across like a lonely New Year's Eve to me. Take a listen to it at and tell me what you think.
Bryant
