One of the things in life that gives me great pleasure is Christmas. It always has as long as I can remember. The music, especially, is something that I absolutely love. And yes, I am one of those people that listen to Christmas music all year long. I do make an effort not to subject anyone else, mainly Michael, to that when it's out of season. Sometimes I can't help it though, if he comes into the office and it's playing, I'm not going to rush to stop it, but I do turn it down while he's in there. Ironically, I'm one of those people, also, who gets really annoyed when I go into a store before Halloween and it's blasting Christmas music. One, it's not even Halloween yet, much less Thanksgiving! And two, it's usually horrible music. Ah, well.
Anyway, it was always a big deal when the holidays came around and we could finally pull out my parents' Christmas records. I know I've listened to them hundreds of times. And I still have them! Of course there was always excellent music at church during Christmas. Jim Reich, Gerald Hamilton and Doug and Terri Vancil made sure of that! Mom and I had a tradition of each year going to the Hallmark store in the mall to get that year's Christmas album. They weren't all great, but most of them are wonderful and I've managed to find a few on vinyl....the cassette tapes didn't last as long as I'd hoped.
Out of that tradition came my search for Christmas records to fill out the collections that Mom had started. Mainly the Firestone series and the Goodyear series. I have about half the records in each collection and am always on the lookout for the others whenever we go to the used record store. Even if I don't find one of those, I always will walk away with a few "new to me" holiday albums. And I've managed to get some really good ones....The Robert Shaw Chorale, The Living Strings, Barbra Streisand, etc. Once I bought the Burl Ives Christmas record for a quarter and saw it selling for over $100 on ebay. Not that I'm going to sell it if at all possible, just nice to know I made a good investment.
I only bring up Christmas music because it's one of my passions. The fun hunt for new Christmas recordings is something I really enjoy and need to get back into more. Sure, I don't really have the room for more records....btw, I'll also buy cd's if they're cheap LOL...but I enjoy it too much not to. It's my happy music. It relaxes me like no other genre of music....until I hear some atrocious version of a classic, then I get get tense haha. Still, it's something I love doing, among so many other things, and I want to get back into that more.
That is all
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