The Best of White Christmas

Earlier this week, my friend Nicole at Destination Unknown wrote a great blog post about her love of Christmas Music. And if you have read my blog for any time at all, I am sure you can assume that I am, in fact, a lover of Christmas music too. Nicole's blog inspired me to share my own homage to the Sounds of the Season, and as expected . . . there's a story to tell.

Christmas music has always been a special part of the holiday season for me. Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald . . . I grew up with the classics, and my love for them has grown even stronger through the years. I knew very early on that Christmas music would always be a big part of me. It makes me sing out loud in seconds, it can bring me to tears in minutes, and it can immediately transpose me to another place and time in my life. I can remember very clearly being a young child and waiting patiently for the radio stations to start playing Christmas music. It was a big deal then, when they actually waited until the week of the holiday to start to play the music (not months ahead, like now). I would sit in my bedroom with the volume of my alarm clock radio set as loud as it could go, and an old tape cassette recorder in my hand just waiting to record a favorite song of mine. Oh, I could close my eyes and remember exactly what it was like.

Much of my love of Christmas music probably comes my from sister, and just thinking of it right now brings a smile to my face. We have had many fun times through the years, harmonizing to Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!, and so many other carols. Band Aid's Do They Know it's Christmas came out in 1984. At that time, I was in 8th grade, and my sister was a senior in college. I remember her coming home for Christmas break (we shared a room), and sitting in our room singing that song. Those are some of my happiest memories of my childhood, and even to this day, I love that song.

One of my favorite stories, though, is when we were on vacation one summer. My sister and I went to Virginia and Washington, DC with my parents (my brothers couldn't get off work that summer, so only my sister and I went.) I can't remember how old I was . . . but one of the stops on our trip was to the Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Virginia. I don't remember a lot from that trip, but I do remember that Busch Gardens had one of those recording booths where you could record yourself singing a song. My sister and I decided to sing "White Christmas".

Oh, White Christmas . . . . will you ever forgive us?

Now, allow me to set the stage for you, will you? This wasn't really a state-of-the-art recording studio. The 'engineer' (AKA - teenage kid working the booth) placed you in what seemed like a small closet with one microphone and two sets of headphones to listen to the music through. While the instrumental music streamed through your headphones, you were to sing along to the music into the microphone. If the 'engineer' needed to tell you to start or stop or start over, his voice would come through the headphones.

So, there my sister and I were.

Crammed into this little booth.

With one microphone.

And we . . . got the giggles.

Big time.

Mainly because our . . . chests . . . kept bumping into each other as we tried to share the microphone. Each time our chests would bump into each other, we started giggling.

"Girls," the 'engineer' said, ". . . you need to start over."

Now, if you must know anything about my sister and I . . . it's that when we get the giggles, it is kind of hard to stop us. I remember one year trying to get my parents Christmas tree down from their attic and I was standing on the ladder and trying to pull it down to my sister when we started getting the giggles. We got them so badly that I had to balance the tree on the top of my head as I stood on the ladder, until we calmed ourselves down enough to continue carrying it down the rest of the way.

Yes . . . those giggles . . . they are the best kind out there.

I don't know how many times we had to start our song over. But I am fairly certain he (the 'engineer') was annoyed. I'm sorry . . . you try singing along with my sister in a small closet. It's funny.

After they were finally able to get a somewhat presentable recording of our rendition of White Christmas, we were released from the giggle chambers and sent out into the lobby of the recording area, where the next 'stars' were waiting to take their turn. And as we stopped out . . . we could hear OUR White Christmas playing loudly in the speakers of the lobby.

We laughed and laughed as we grabbed our cassette tape and ran out of there.

And to this day, I laugh any time I hear White Christmas being played.

I wonder where that cassette tape is.

Wouldn't that be funny . . . to hear it again? Yes. It would be wonderful.

Oh, how I love Christmas music.

What about you? Share your favorite song in the comments. I'd love to know.