ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, December 10, 1996 TAG: 9612100071
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHRISTOPHER SLONE
CHRISTMAS is the most wonderful time of the year. I really mean it. I'm a big fan. I could easily enjoy it year-round. In one sense, I already do.
I normally start listening to Christmas songs in early July and stop listening sometime late in June. My wife and I, who together earn about $7 a year, own 347 Christmas cassette tapes.
You know all those Christmas cassettes Hallmark sells every year? We have them. All of them. We buy the newest one every year. We don't care who the artist is, we just buy it. (``Oh, honey, look Henry Kissinger sings 'Rudolph, The Red Nosed Reindeer'! Neat! Let's get two!") But Hallmark is just the beginning.
My favorite Christmas tape is probably Andy Williams. What a voice. Simple, unpretentious, smooth. He has good teeth, too. My wife, however, is partial to Placido Domingo. She's from New York, so what can you expect? Of course, Bing Crosby is a hit with us both, as is Perry Como.
Christmas songs somehow transcend musical genres. For instance, normally I couldn't care less about a country singer like Crystal Gale, but just let me hear her singing "O Holy Night," and whammo! I'm an instant fan.
We have a variety of tapes sung by choirs, like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and the Vienna Boys' Choir, and the Chicago Bears Defensive Linemen Choir. Heck, we even have a tape of monks singing Gregorian chants. (Which, interestingly enough, isn't all that different from the Defensive Linemen Choir.)
A lot of our Christmas tapes have no singing at all. We've got a Chet Atkins tape that's just country guitar. We have a Larry Carlton tape that's just jazz guitar. We have a Christopher Parkening tape that's just classical guitar. OK, the Parkening tape really isn't a Christmas tape, it's just the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. But since it has "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring," it counts.
I like guitar, if you hadn't guessed. But we have other instrumental Christmas tapes as well.
We have George Winston playing New Age Christmas music on piano. (At least it's supposed to be Christmas music - I really can't tell for sure. I'm pretty sure it's a piano, though.)
We have Christmas brass quartets, quintets, maybe even sextuplets. We have Christmas on harp, on dulcimer, on organ, on violin. I think we even have a tape of kazoo music. (On second thought, that might have just been my son on the kazoo last Christmas.)
We have a ton of those compilation tapes sold by exclusive shoppes like 7-Eleven and Exxon. You know the type I'm talking about: They have singers like Ella Fitzgerald, George Beverly Shea, Jose Feliciano and Nirvana all on the same side. Some of these tapes are actually quite good, particularly when you consider the fact that they're usually priced cheaper than a Big Mac.
There's no doubt about it, Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. Some of us just enjoy it longer than others (no matter what is costs us).
Oh, speaking of which, I need to sign off so I can rewind the tape I'm listening to now (``Marcia Brady's Yuletime Favorites" - a real gem!). In the words of that immortal performer Henry Kissinger, "Merry Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight."
Christopher Slone of Roanoke is a graduate student living temporarily in Virginia Beach.
LENGTH: Medium: 65 linesby CNB