When I was little, I had a reputation in my family for breaking every record player I touched. There was the boxy but portable plastic variety that folded up into a clunky briefcase (not unlike the audiometers I would one day drag around to administer hearing screenings as a speech pathologist). I’d spend afternoons while younger siblings were napping sitting cross-legged in front of it, listening to stories, like Snow White or Peter And The Wolf, on tiny 45s that intermittently instructed you to turn the page in the accompanying books “whenever you hear the chime”. These records all required that fascinating plastic insert in the center, which—combined with the fragile arm, delicate needle, slender spindle, and mesmerizing dials—was just one moving part too many for a girl who would later cause pieces of technology to self-destruct as an adult--in ways that would inspire my much more tech-savvy husband to just throw up his hands, with an exasperated “For F-sake!!!” I thoroughly enjoyed that record player, but—like Lennie from Of Mice and Men, who accidentally crushes animals when overcome by their cuteness—I somehow managed to love the life out of it.
Fortunately, we also had the obligatory piece-of-furniture record player that every family owned well into the 80s as a counterpart to their piece-of-furniture TV. This “record player” was the size of a dining room sideboard, with a glossy wooden top, just begging to be warped by forgotten juice cup rings. This top was hinged to the base at one end, so that adults could access the record player enclosed—and so that children could attempt to sever fingers or decapitate themselves by turning it into a make-shift guillotine for whatever extraneous body parts ventured too close to the music-playing mechanism. By virtue of its inaccessibility—and through repeated warnings that there would be hell to pay—this record player fared much better against my accidental efforts to destroy it. Oh, I did eventually break that one, too—but fortunately for me, CDs had become “a thing” by that point and everyone just sighed with defeated acceptance at the passing of this most recent casualty of my clumsiness.
Until that fateful day, however, this sideboard-with-speakers was the vehicle for our holiday happiness as kids—for it played our favorite-of-all-favorite Christmas records, ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas by Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians. Originally released sometime during the 1940s or 50s, the album featured over-the-top chorus vocals, piled high over a big-band-style orchestra—the amalgamation of different Kristen Wiig sketches from SNL, like the Lawrence Welk parody where she plays the deranged sister with an expansive forehead and abnormally tiny hands--and the one featuring her and Fred Armisen in ugly Christmas sweaters, making up songs as they go along. The songs on this album were considerably more put-together than that latter sketch, of course. You might even say the majority of its tracks were comically over-orchestrated to ridiculous result. For example, Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer included what sounded like an air horn in place of the word “reindeer” throughout the entire second verse of the song--kind of like a preschool class clapping in place of a letter for the “B-I-N-G-O” part of “Bingo Was His Name-o”. Naturally, as kids, we thought this was hilarious. My mom, however, ultimately banned the song forever, having been treated to the hardly-dulcet tones of Rudolph The Red-Nosed (Air Horn) on repeat for one too many Decembers in a row.
Along with Rudolph, the album’s two additional gems were Jingle Bells and ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas, which would become the intro and the grand finale to our annual Christmas Eve performance for the parents. Although I can’t remember its inception—I’m pretty sure it was all Marie’s idea to gather the siblings together and choreograph a series of routines for absolutely no reason beyond sh*&s and giggles. Marie and I were the stars of the show—Marie, naturally, since it was her idea—and myself, because I was easily led and could be trusted to do whatever the hell she told me to. Liz was cast in intermittent cameo roles for comic effect, much like the clown who drags ill-received performers off the stage with a giant cane during Amateur Night on Showtime at the Apollo. While Marie and I fancied ourselves the graceful lead and supporting ingénue—the dancing sugar plums, if you will--Liz was always relegated to “reindeer” or “Joseph” or perhaps “Santa”--but even Santa, while not graceful, was a tough role to relinquish during the holidays. Caroline participated in the form of cuteness relief--and relished, at a young age, every opportunity to somersault across the living room rug in costume for anyone who would watch. At first, when she was too young to follow directions, we just had her wander on and off “stage”, wearing some kind of cute holiday get-up in keeping with whatever song was playing. And in later years, we found other ways to include her as, say, the sleeping child in whose head those dainty sugar plums (still Marie and myself) were dancing. I’m sure Mikey’s absence from these memorable performances was luck of the chronological draw for him—like a kid who just missed the Vietnam draft. Had he been old enough to ambulate during this show’s run on the Broadway adjacent to the family dining room, I’m sure he would still be quaking from the post-traumatic stress of the roles and costume changes we would have imposed on him. But, with Mikey being 7-10 years younger than the task masters, the final curtain call had come and gone by the time he was cognizant and coordinated enough to be incorporated into the artistic vision.
During the run of our veritable variety show, different songs and routines fell in and out of favor—with the exception of Jingle Bells and ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas. Fred Waring’s Jingle Bells was a nearly 7-minute choral epic that changed musical genre like Lady Gaga changes costume. The opening section conjures the image of traditional Russian dance mixed with hearty notes of Hava Nagila (HEY!)--and maybe even a dash of “eh-oh-let’s go!” Ramones. It then transitions from booming to barely audible, before it morphs into a melee of maracas for a chaotic cha-cha that makes you want to sell bananas and dance around with a fruit bowl adhered to your head. From there, it goes full tango-style, complete with Spanish lyrics that I’m pretty sure have nothing to do with Jingle Bells. The next part starts out jazzy, but progresses into a thinly-veiled excuse for chorus line kicks. The subsequent piano solo, sans vocals, begins very dainty and classical--then rambles into something you might hear playing in a saloon right before the dusty frontiersmen start breaking chairs and beer steins over each other’s heads. Then all of a sudden, there’s a stand-up bass solo that becomes the back-drop for Beatnik-spoken-word nonsense… “What a jingle…makes me tingle…Hear that rhythm? Fine!” The vocals and music then join forces in a simulated train sequence, where the locomotive speed ranges from “I-think-I-can” to “warp” over a period of about 30 seconds. This gives way to yet another reprise of the same basic verse, in very much the spirit of “This is the song that never ends…”, with background singers repeating “jingle-jingle, jingle-jingle, jingle-jingle” behind the main vocals like a group of people descending into madness. The final sequence, nearly seven minutes in, is dramatically slow--like the high-stepping march of a communist army--before it crescendos into an explosion of voices and instruments that abruptly stops--leading you to imagine that they’ve all expired from the Earth and lay dead from exhaustion somewhere in the silence. It was...the BEST. Just a red-hot mess from beginning to end--a haphazard Frankenstein of musical caricatures that we choreographed accordingly—from mock-tango to tip-toes, punctuated (year after year) by the acrobatic exclamation point of Marie and I locking arms, back-to-back, so she could flip me over her shoulders, swing-dance-style.
'Twas The Night Before Christmas was like the mild-mannered cousin to Jingle Bells’ crazy-eyed insanity—a magically straight-faced musicalization of the treasured Christmas Eve story, A Visit From St. Nicholas. Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians toned it down considerably for this one--and it remains to this day, one of my very favorite Christmas songs. While I’m sure my sisters and I looked hilarious in our make-shift costumes--jumping from the roles of ‘mama in her kerchief’ to ‘sugar plums’ to ‘reindeer’ over the course of several minutes--we were dead serious about it. The dreamy instrumentation of the song was what I would play over and over again in my head as I lay in my bed later that night by the light of the electric holiday candle in my window--imagining that every ‘twinkling’ I heard through the ceiling was actually a reindeer hoof (and not the semi-rabid scratching of Edgareen, our perpetually skittish and idiosyncratic black cat who lived 80% of her life on the roof of our house). When the song was over, my sisters and I took our very theatrical bows, and our parents smiled and laughed and exchanged looks that I now recognize as that special brand of pride you share with your spouse when your kids do something adorably silly and wonderful.
Just like I can’t remember the last time I whole-heartedly propelled Malibu Barbie around in her metallic pink Corvette, there was no grand farewell tour for our annual Christmas performance. We simply aged-out of the motivation to participate one by one, until the days of eagerly listening for Santa had long passed for all 5 of us—and along with them, our Christmas Eve performance. The family went about its business of growing up and going out into the world, and Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians disappeared into the abyss.
A few Christmases ago, I went looking for Fred & Friends on the Internet—the ultimate homing device for anything you otherwise have no idea how to start looking for. At that point, I’d had to begin my search with “…and the Pennsylvanians” because poor Fred Waring's name had dropped out of my consciousness as the leader of the group—and because “Jingle Bells”, “Rudolph”, and “’Twas The Night Before Christmas” were hardly the filters that were going to get me there. Ever the treasure-trove of random at its most, YouTube eventually came through for me with audio clips of all three family favorites, the links to which I immediately emailed to my parents and siblings. While I’m sure mom and dad preferred to let forgotten Rudolphs lie, they admitted their guilty pleasure in listening to ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas. According to Mama, it even brought a tear or two to Daddy’s eyes.
Earlier this month on a particularly cold and rainy December day, I played Fred Waring's Jingle Bells for my boys and let them dance around like maniacs in our bonus room. With all its genre-changes and attention deficits, it really lends itself to the kind of Simon-Says activities kids love—Tip-toe! Now, act like a train! Quick! Shake your hands like you’re holding maracas! And as I watched them, smiling and laughing at their silliness like my parents once did with us, I’m reminded that the magic is still real for them. While I myself have gradually become more exhausted than exhilarated by the holidays over the years, my kids are just now entering the foyer area of that innocently joyful space. One day, they’ll stumble into the kitchen to discover how the sausage is made—and that Santa has nothing to do with it. But in the meantime, they’re in that sweet spot—just old enough to get it, but not old enough to connect the dots and realize that none of it makes any kinda sense. And in the spirit of celebrating the birth of a Savior—the original “reason for the season”--I’m reminded to be forever grateful for the two births that saved me from a life that would not have been nearly as full without them--and for the chance to recapture that precious air of anticipation, like the quiet crackle on vinyl--just before the first notes (or air horn) on your favorite Christmas record.
Fortunately, we also had the obligatory piece-of-furniture record player that every family owned well into the 80s as a counterpart to their piece-of-furniture TV. This “record player” was the size of a dining room sideboard, with a glossy wooden top, just begging to be warped by forgotten juice cup rings. This top was hinged to the base at one end, so that adults could access the record player enclosed—and so that children could attempt to sever fingers or decapitate themselves by turning it into a make-shift guillotine for whatever extraneous body parts ventured too close to the music-playing mechanism. By virtue of its inaccessibility—and through repeated warnings that there would be hell to pay—this record player fared much better against my accidental efforts to destroy it. Oh, I did eventually break that one, too—but fortunately for me, CDs had become “a thing” by that point and everyone just sighed with defeated acceptance at the passing of this most recent casualty of my clumsiness.
Until that fateful day, however, this sideboard-with-speakers was the vehicle for our holiday happiness as kids—for it played our favorite-of-all-favorite Christmas records, ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas by Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians. Originally released sometime during the 1940s or 50s, the album featured over-the-top chorus vocals, piled high over a big-band-style orchestra—the amalgamation of different Kristen Wiig sketches from SNL, like the Lawrence Welk parody where she plays the deranged sister with an expansive forehead and abnormally tiny hands--and the one featuring her and Fred Armisen in ugly Christmas sweaters, making up songs as they go along. The songs on this album were considerably more put-together than that latter sketch, of course. You might even say the majority of its tracks were comically over-orchestrated to ridiculous result. For example, Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer included what sounded like an air horn in place of the word “reindeer” throughout the entire second verse of the song--kind of like a preschool class clapping in place of a letter for the “B-I-N-G-O” part of “Bingo Was His Name-o”. Naturally, as kids, we thought this was hilarious. My mom, however, ultimately banned the song forever, having been treated to the hardly-dulcet tones of Rudolph The Red-Nosed (Air Horn) on repeat for one too many Decembers in a row.
Along with Rudolph, the album’s two additional gems were Jingle Bells and ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas, which would become the intro and the grand finale to our annual Christmas Eve performance for the parents. Although I can’t remember its inception—I’m pretty sure it was all Marie’s idea to gather the siblings together and choreograph a series of routines for absolutely no reason beyond sh*&s and giggles. Marie and I were the stars of the show—Marie, naturally, since it was her idea—and myself, because I was easily led and could be trusted to do whatever the hell she told me to. Liz was cast in intermittent cameo roles for comic effect, much like the clown who drags ill-received performers off the stage with a giant cane during Amateur Night on Showtime at the Apollo. While Marie and I fancied ourselves the graceful lead and supporting ingénue—the dancing sugar plums, if you will--Liz was always relegated to “reindeer” or “Joseph” or perhaps “Santa”--but even Santa, while not graceful, was a tough role to relinquish during the holidays. Caroline participated in the form of cuteness relief--and relished, at a young age, every opportunity to somersault across the living room rug in costume for anyone who would watch. At first, when she was too young to follow directions, we just had her wander on and off “stage”, wearing some kind of cute holiday get-up in keeping with whatever song was playing. And in later years, we found other ways to include her as, say, the sleeping child in whose head those dainty sugar plums (still Marie and myself) were dancing. I’m sure Mikey’s absence from these memorable performances was luck of the chronological draw for him—like a kid who just missed the Vietnam draft. Had he been old enough to ambulate during this show’s run on the Broadway adjacent to the family dining room, I’m sure he would still be quaking from the post-traumatic stress of the roles and costume changes we would have imposed on him. But, with Mikey being 7-10 years younger than the task masters, the final curtain call had come and gone by the time he was cognizant and coordinated enough to be incorporated into the artistic vision.
During the run of our veritable variety show, different songs and routines fell in and out of favor—with the exception of Jingle Bells and ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas. Fred Waring’s Jingle Bells was a nearly 7-minute choral epic that changed musical genre like Lady Gaga changes costume. The opening section conjures the image of traditional Russian dance mixed with hearty notes of Hava Nagila (HEY!)--and maybe even a dash of “eh-oh-let’s go!” Ramones. It then transitions from booming to barely audible, before it morphs into a melee of maracas for a chaotic cha-cha that makes you want to sell bananas and dance around with a fruit bowl adhered to your head. From there, it goes full tango-style, complete with Spanish lyrics that I’m pretty sure have nothing to do with Jingle Bells. The next part starts out jazzy, but progresses into a thinly-veiled excuse for chorus line kicks. The subsequent piano solo, sans vocals, begins very dainty and classical--then rambles into something you might hear playing in a saloon right before the dusty frontiersmen start breaking chairs and beer steins over each other’s heads. Then all of a sudden, there’s a stand-up bass solo that becomes the back-drop for Beatnik-spoken-word nonsense… “What a jingle…makes me tingle…Hear that rhythm? Fine!” The vocals and music then join forces in a simulated train sequence, where the locomotive speed ranges from “I-think-I-can” to “warp” over a period of about 30 seconds. This gives way to yet another reprise of the same basic verse, in very much the spirit of “This is the song that never ends…”, with background singers repeating “jingle-jingle, jingle-jingle, jingle-jingle” behind the main vocals like a group of people descending into madness. The final sequence, nearly seven minutes in, is dramatically slow--like the high-stepping march of a communist army--before it crescendos into an explosion of voices and instruments that abruptly stops--leading you to imagine that they’ve all expired from the Earth and lay dead from exhaustion somewhere in the silence. It was...the BEST. Just a red-hot mess from beginning to end--a haphazard Frankenstein of musical caricatures that we choreographed accordingly—from mock-tango to tip-toes, punctuated (year after year) by the acrobatic exclamation point of Marie and I locking arms, back-to-back, so she could flip me over her shoulders, swing-dance-style.
'Twas The Night Before Christmas was like the mild-mannered cousin to Jingle Bells’ crazy-eyed insanity—a magically straight-faced musicalization of the treasured Christmas Eve story, A Visit From St. Nicholas. Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians toned it down considerably for this one--and it remains to this day, one of my very favorite Christmas songs. While I’m sure my sisters and I looked hilarious in our make-shift costumes--jumping from the roles of ‘mama in her kerchief’ to ‘sugar plums’ to ‘reindeer’ over the course of several minutes--we were dead serious about it. The dreamy instrumentation of the song was what I would play over and over again in my head as I lay in my bed later that night by the light of the electric holiday candle in my window--imagining that every ‘twinkling’ I heard through the ceiling was actually a reindeer hoof (and not the semi-rabid scratching of Edgareen, our perpetually skittish and idiosyncratic black cat who lived 80% of her life on the roof of our house). When the song was over, my sisters and I took our very theatrical bows, and our parents smiled and laughed and exchanged looks that I now recognize as that special brand of pride you share with your spouse when your kids do something adorably silly and wonderful.
Just like I can’t remember the last time I whole-heartedly propelled Malibu Barbie around in her metallic pink Corvette, there was no grand farewell tour for our annual Christmas performance. We simply aged-out of the motivation to participate one by one, until the days of eagerly listening for Santa had long passed for all 5 of us—and along with them, our Christmas Eve performance. The family went about its business of growing up and going out into the world, and Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians disappeared into the abyss.
A few Christmases ago, I went looking for Fred & Friends on the Internet—the ultimate homing device for anything you otherwise have no idea how to start looking for. At that point, I’d had to begin my search with “…and the Pennsylvanians” because poor Fred Waring's name had dropped out of my consciousness as the leader of the group—and because “Jingle Bells”, “Rudolph”, and “’Twas The Night Before Christmas” were hardly the filters that were going to get me there. Ever the treasure-trove of random at its most, YouTube eventually came through for me with audio clips of all three family favorites, the links to which I immediately emailed to my parents and siblings. While I’m sure mom and dad preferred to let forgotten Rudolphs lie, they admitted their guilty pleasure in listening to ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas. According to Mama, it even brought a tear or two to Daddy’s eyes.
Earlier this month on a particularly cold and rainy December day, I played Fred Waring's Jingle Bells for my boys and let them dance around like maniacs in our bonus room. With all its genre-changes and attention deficits, it really lends itself to the kind of Simon-Says activities kids love—Tip-toe! Now, act like a train! Quick! Shake your hands like you’re holding maracas! And as I watched them, smiling and laughing at their silliness like my parents once did with us, I’m reminded that the magic is still real for them. While I myself have gradually become more exhausted than exhilarated by the holidays over the years, my kids are just now entering the foyer area of that innocently joyful space. One day, they’ll stumble into the kitchen to discover how the sausage is made—and that Santa has nothing to do with it. But in the meantime, they’re in that sweet spot—just old enough to get it, but not old enough to connect the dots and realize that none of it makes any kinda sense. And in the spirit of celebrating the birth of a Savior—the original “reason for the season”--I’m reminded to be forever grateful for the two births that saved me from a life that would not have been nearly as full without them--and for the chance to recapture that precious air of anticipation, like the quiet crackle on vinyl--just before the first notes (or air horn) on your favorite Christmas record.
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| Three quarters of the Christmas Eve Dance Troupe, circa 1982 |
This would make a great podcast! With audio clips and interviews. In all your spare time. :)
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