Just about everyone has their own favorite Christmas album. Prairie got a copy of her family’s traditional music and started playing it today — Peter, Paul and Mary’s ‘A Holiday Celebration’ — and it got me thinking about my own, long-lost personal favorite. For years, there was one particular album that I’d dig out every Christmas and put on the record player…however, it’s been ages since I’ve heard it, and while I would occasionally get snippets of the songs floating through my head, or brief flashes of the cover art, I haven’t been able to pull the actual title of the album out of my brain in years.
Chatting with Prairie tonight about it, though, the word ‘sunshine’ popped out of my head, which seemed to jibe with the hazy memory of a rising sun on the cover, so I tossed ‘sunshine christmas album’ at Google. I wasn’t really expecting to get a useful hit, but lo and behold, the third major link caught my eye — an (apparently unauthorized) bootleg of ‘Sunshine and Snowflakes: 40 Kids Singing at Christmas‘. Bingo — the right title, the right cover art, and the titles of the songs looked right….
This was promising, but it still didn’t let me actually listen to the album. So, one more trip to Google, now that I actually had the official title…and once again, success! A 2004 weblog post by the Mad Philosopher had the entire album posted as .mp3 files, complete with cover art. Immediately I downloaded the files, tossed them into iTunes, and called Prairie into the room to listen.
Finally being able to hear this again is great. Prairie’s been enjoying it, and I’m amazed at just how much I’m remembering, almost as if it was just last Christmas that I was pulling the record out of its sleeve, putting it on dad’s record player, and carefully lowering the needle onto the vinyl. And while I’m sure there’s a lot of nostalgia wrapped up in this, the music is fun — a very, very 70’s funk/rock medley of traditional songs on side one, and five original tracks, three of which are nice and pretty, but two of which are the two that I really remember being fond of (“Wise Men Still Adore Him” and “Happy Birthday, Baby Jesus”).
So for me, this is a perfect Christmas Eve present. I get to revisit part of my childhood with some good old music, Prairie’s enjoying hearing the songs (and watching me bounce around as I remember bits and pieces of them), and I get some more good Christmas music to add to our collection.
Now, off to bed. After all, if I don’t go to bed, Santa won’t stop by…and that would be a sad, sad thing indeed!
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Merry Solstice…pick your holiday, call it what you will, just have a good one!
