christmasI’m not typically a fan of the old fashioned Christmas  carols, especially those of a religious nature. While I’m fully aware that Jesus is the reason for the season, I take my Christmas without much Christ. But for the past week or so, I’ve really been bopping along to Frank Sinatra’s contribution to the holiday music pantheon. And Old Blue Eyes is the very definition of old fashioned and he seems to have a particular penchant for the religious numbers.

But I’m in the festive spirit this year and Sinatra’s Christmas songs bring back memories of some of my favorite Christmases past. My maternal grandparents live in a house they built out in the woods of northern Ontario. Every few years, we would schlep the family up to the north woods for the holidays. For our relatively small nuclear family, this is the closest that we got to the holidays that we saw on the TV. They were fantastic; we were in the midst of cousins and aunts and uncles. Surrounded by the sounds of children playing and paper ripping and Christmas songs and peals of laughter. My grandparents’ house was a virtual playground inside – an homage to Vegas in its prime – and out – a genuine winter wonderland blanketed in feet of snow.

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But one of the most poignant memories from these Christmases was the sound of a Frank Sinatra 8-track endlessly repeating on the stereo.

Of course, memories are selective things. One remembers what one wants and I’ve selected the gauzy, warm memories of Christmas past to take with me into adulthood and left the family drama behind me. Just seems the Christmas-y thing to do. I want my boys to have similarly warm memories of Christmas and to that end, I’m stifling my penchant for moodiness during the holidays; becoming less Ebenezer Scrooge and more Clark W. Griswald. And this year my relatively small nuclear family will get to have a semblance of one of those TV Christmas special holidays.

christmas1This Christmas we’ll be surrounded by family – Dr. O’C’s Australian kin and more of her family from Europe. Boy Z and Not Max have been reveling in the company of cousins and aunts and uncles for the last week or so and on Christmas day will be surrounded by a score or so of family. They’ll have little to no memory of this Christmas as they get older, but they’ll have the joy of a few midsummer days spent in the warm, if imperfect, embrace of family. I hope that they’ll have memories like mine – hazy but happy.

Of course their Christmases will be on the other side of the world, potentially in the midsummer heat (it was 108F today). There won’t be chestnuts roasting on an open fire and if our Christmas is white, I’m fairly certain that the apocalypse is under way. But Boy Z and Not Max will be in the midst of cousins and aunts and uncles. They will be surrounded by the sounds of children playing and paper ripping and Christmas songs and peals of laughter. On Christmas morning, our house will be a virtual playground inside and despite not being a winter wonderland outside, Boy Z will probably be able to take his new kite and cricket bat to the beach. Shhh! Don’t tell him want Santa’s bringing.

You can’t replicate everything. Nor should you. But Frank Sinatra will be playing on my Bose iPod dock.

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I’ve got grand ambitions of getting another post done before Christmas, but at my current pace of one every week or so that seems unlikely to happen. So, Merry Christmas to you, my gentle readers.

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I don’t think that the Sinatra album that my grandparents had is available any longer. But you can still hear some of his finest Christmas numbers on “A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra”, available at Frank Sinatra - A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra

 
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