and a blue-eyed bow-tied crooner in a pear tree

The past few years, despite being full of my usual Christmas Cheer, I haven't really listened to a whole lot of Christmas music. I used to play it in the car, on the stereo, wherever I could, from around Thanksgiving through the new year. It felt weird to listen to anything else. But then all of a sudden I just stopped, keeping Christmas music for visits to my parents' house, shopping in stores, and in the car on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day only. Last year, I did listen to Wintersong quite a bit, courtesy of the jungle, but that was about the extent of it. This year, maybe inspired by the accessibility/ease of the iPod and the iHome, I am back in it. And my obsession du jour, I should be embarassed to say, is The Andy Williams Christmas Album.

I guess it's better than my freshman year of college, when my favorite Christmas CD was A Christmas Together with John Denver and the Muppets. Actually, that's still kind of a favorite. But the one I keep playing over and over is good old Andy Williams. In general, it's totally not my kind of music. He's kind of a crooner. It's almost show-tunesy. It is really the height of dorkitude, listening to these songs as much as I have. But this album more than any other I can think of reminds me of Christmastime when I was growing up. In my mind, I'm back in our family room in upstate New York, sitting on the floor, looking over the red record cover and Andy Williams' face, the blue of his eyes kind of surreal. I'm thinking about people hanging up their "socks" for Santa Claus, picturing them, oddly, as white tube socks with red trim, rather than actual Christmas stockings. I'm picturing people standing out in the cold and roasting chestnuts over... a barrel fire, I think, and the chestnuts are on sticks, like marshmallows for s'mores? My imagination still takes the path that it did when I was small, when the songs first etched their way into my brain, and I assigned certain images to the words, whether or not they made any sense. I don't care so much that it doesn't make any sense... it's kind of fun that it doesn't. Most of all, it is fun to sing these songs to K.Lo, who (as anyone who's spent 5 minutes with her can attest) will dance to anything with a beat. And there is so much energy in them.

I don't know--you can't really pick apart the magic too much to figure out why. But I highly recommend getting in touch with your Inner Dork this holiday season and picking up a copy of this fantastic compilation. It could truly make it The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.