Christmas posts #1

OK, so it's getting close, has been since August in Sainsbury's, yes its that old Christmas magic and its starting to cause a tingle in this old man's stomach. Starbucks has the eggnog latte's on the menu, and I've been tracking down my Christmas music cd's ready for the run up to the big day...be prepared!!

I've got a few favourites, my "grown up" favourite I think has to be Tony Bennett's "Snowfall - The Christmas Album" which I bought first on vinyl the first time me and my wife to be spent bits of the Christmas holidays together, we had our very own turkey dinner in my old bedsit, before she had to go home to be with her mum for the big day. Close second comes Harry Connick Jr's "When My Heart Finds Christmas"

However I am without doubt that my all time favourite is Tijuana Christmas by the Torero Brass Band, the cheesiest and most seventies record you could imagine. I have it still on vinyl, and managed to get a digital copy via a very kind chap, whose website will be linked to here.

"Christmas is the most joyful festival of the Christian year, when we celebrate at the same time the turning point of the winter and the new hope that was brought to men with the birth of Jesus. Christmas is a time when we make up for the bleakness of the weather outside with the warmth of our spirits, and it is no coincidence that the songs which have come to be particularly associated with Christmas should be carols, which have always been the most cheerful and often the most secular of Christian songs. On this record you find your favourite carols in an unfamiliar guise--we've called the album 'Tijuana Christmas', but you will find the mariachi sound taking on a richer and more varied flavour as the Torero Band bring out the charms of our most beautiful carol tunes in imaginative brand new arrangements. 'The Holly and the Ivy' sets the pace with a bright, sparkling beat that even adds to the gaiety of one of our oldest and liveliest carols; 'Silent Night' a much more recent and a more devout carol, is given a quite contrasting treatment, slow and tender. 'Hark, the Herald Angels Sing' sets off again at a brisk, bouncy pace--and if you feel like dancing, why not? It may come as a surprise to you that our oldest carols used to be dances, and that the word itself described a form of circular dance.
In the preface to the Oxford book of carols you will find carols described as songs with a religious impulse that are simple, joyful, popular and modern. You'll never have heard them sounding more joyful, popular or modern than they do on this exciting and original L.P."

Why this one?...well its the one that figured most prominently in my childhood obviously. Mum and dad would put it on the old Phillips "stereogram" on christmas day as we opened the presents, so it was their christmas album too. Funnily enough my cousin also had a copy in his house, and they were really into it as well. It brings back the feeling of warmth that only childhood christmases can bring, lots of happy memories of a time when the family was a big deal, now we're all splintered over the country...indeed the world, its all a bit of a damp squib in the end, but then I guess that's what growing old is all about.