Happy mid-Advent! Today is the 12th, which puts us squarely halfway through the season!

Today the Virtual Advent Tour travels across my living room (and several states, since he’s currently in Utah) to Rudi’s blog, randomduck. Rudi’s post focuses on one of his favorite Christmas songs, a standard popularized in a film 75 years ago, and why it feels particularly resonant this year.

See you back here tomorrow.

Season’s Greetings! Today is the 11th day on our Virtual Advent Tour. With only two weeks until Christmas Day, I hope your planning is going well and that you are managing to fit in fun amidst the chores. Rudi and I finished decorating our tree tonight while watching an old Yogi Bear/Hanna-Barbera special, and I dug the Christmas cards out yesterday, with the hopes that I can spend some time writing them while Rudi’s out of town for the next week.

Behind today’s door is a post from DOD, my dear old dad, who has once again provided us with some interesting facts about one of our favorite Christmas traditions — music:

It’s always been interesting to me how a song evolves from classical or popular music to become one of the Christmas season’s classics. And we already know that you are not required to write about Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Wise Men, Shepherds, or mangers to have your song be accepted and loved at Christmas time. Having Googled “Christmas songs that don’t necessarily refer to Christmas,” the category and number seem to vary in the area between 12 and 20. Most music fans could readily identify songs such as Leroy Anderson’s “Sleigh Ride,” made popular as a holiday song by Arthur Feidler and the Boston Pops, singer/cowboy Gene Autry’s “Frosty the Snowman,” written by Jack Rollins and Steve Nelson, and, of course, “Jingle Bells,” a tune James Lord Pierpont, a church organist who was tasked by his minister dad to write a little ditty for Thanksgiving Service (and which of us hasn’t been so tasked).

While it’s tough to say why a song becomes popular enough to move into the Christmas category and be viewed with sanctified awe and respect, we do readily accept those moves. Look what we have accomplished with Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” But I digress. I actually have two songs that did not fall into any of the Google informative paragraphs, but which, if you look into information about either, you will find that those two songs have been accepted as Christmas tunes. Thought I’d run some thoughts by you to see whether you concur. The songs are presents — one each — from the 50’s and 60’s. One came to pop music from folk music and the other from the pop format. Both became increasingly popular through singers of country music, but I would expect to hear either song on any Christmas music-formatted radio station between Thanksgiving and Christmas morning. Although both tunes list a composer and a lyricist, words count, so we’ll be writing about the person who gave us the pleasure of singing along.

In 1957, the Lennon Sisters (Lawrence Welk’s very own) recorded and released a song about a shopper who overhears a little girl standing outside the window of a toy store. The girl is enthralled by a dolly whose sales card reads, Shake me I rattle, squeeze me I cry. Please take me home and love me. While the song does not mention the Christmas season, you should know that it was snowing. The woman recalls an earlier time when she herself was looking in a toy store window at a doll and was a penny short of the price. We don’t know whether she was able to negotiate the purchase, but the woman goes into the shop and buys the doll and sends it home with the little girl. Regrettably, the Lennon Sisters didn’t make the charts with the song. However, in 1963, Marion Worth recorded the song and it made it to the pop charts up to #42. A decade later, Cristy Lane resurrected the song which made it to #16 on the country music charts. Three decades of successful recordings. And Cristy Lane added it to both of her Christmas albums.

“Shake Me I Rattle (Squeeze Me I Cry)” has lyrics by Hal Hackady (1922–2015) who was born in Middletown, CT, and graduated from Wesleyan University. He went on to a career writing tv shows (GE Theater) and Broadway shows (Snoopy, the Musical). He wrote the song “Just One Person” for Snoopy and it was a favorite of the Muppets. It was sung at the funeral of Jim Henson and again in the tv tribute show to Henson. Both performances are available on YouTube, but be prepared to be affected. Hackady sure could write some sensitive music.

On to song 2.

In 1949, Jack Segal (1918–2015) from Minneapolis, Minnesota, spent 15 minutes dashing off a lovely little ballad, “Scarlet Ribbons (For Her Hair).” Very popular singer Jo Stafford recorded the song in January, 1950, but it didn’t go anywhere. (Some may surmise that it just missed the Christmas season. Could be, could be.) The song sat around the office for a couple of years until Harry Belafonte recorded the tune in 1952. (Yes, Harry also gave rise to Jester Hariston’s “Mary’s Boy Child” later in his career and not part of this story.) “Scarlet Ribbon” was released in 1954 and started its way into our hearts. In 1959, a country group, the Browns, recorded/released the song in November, 1959, just in time for you-know-what holiday. They took the song to #13 on the pop charts and #7 on the country music charts. If you are the person who is not familiar with the song, it describes the plight of a dad who overhears his daughter’s bedtime prayer in which she asks for scarlet ribbons for her hair. Poor day. All of the stores are closed and shuttered — not like these days, eh? — and while he drives around and searches for some ribbons, he finds none. He goes home, peeks in her room and there on her bed are a profusion of scarlet ribbons. He has no idea where they came from, but obviously as a good member of the dad club, he accepts the appearance of the ribbons and knows how happy it will make his daughter. No kidding, I can almost feel those tears welling up now.

The song has been recorded by at least 50 artists; it’s been in tv shows (Wayne Newton sang it on Bonanza), and it was sung by one of the musical acts in something Brian Epstein called Another Beatles’ Christmas Eve Show in 1964. Other artists who have added it to a Christmas album include Burl Ives, Patti Page, Jim Reeves, Michael Crawford, Cliff Richard and Celtic Thunder. If that doesn’t make you want to put it in your next Christmas album, I’ll be surprised.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Merry Christmas, DOD, and thanks for taking part again in this year’s Tour. I always learn so much from the posts you write.

We’ll see you back here tomorrow.

Welcome to the tenth day of the Virtual Advent Tour. Today I’m combining our holiday tour with That Artsy Reader Girl’s Top Ten Tuesday meme to share ten Christmas-themed books (spanning all age groups) that I recommend:

1. The Birds’ Christmas Carol by Kate Douglas Wiggins: This overly sentimental, melodramatic picture book tells the Victorian Era story of an ill girl, Carol, who invites the neighbor children, The Birds, to her Christmas Day birthday party. I wept buckets over this as a child and teen and would borrow it annually from the library in order to do so.
2. The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg: I first encountered this picture book in a French translation, which we read aloud my senior year of high school. Charming in any language, this story, about a boy who takes a train to the North Pole, ultimately is about faith and believing in the unseen, yet still known. The movie adaptation is also quite good.
3. A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas: This prose piece, a fictionalized memoir about a bygone Christmastime in a Welsh village, was originally written by one of the early 20th-century’s best poets as a radio broadcast. Sentimental without ever becoming sappy, this story is beautiful whether read on the page, listened to as read by its author, or seen performed by actors.
4. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson: I think, although I don’t remember for certain, that I saw a tv adaptation of this first and then discovered the book, but it could have been the other way around. Either way, this middle-grade novel focuses on the Herdmans, a poor family of under-supervised, over-bullying, mean children, who get it into their heads that they want to take over their local Sunday School production of the Nativity play.
5. Greenglass House by Kate Milford: In this fantastical middle-grade novel, a tween boy and his adoptive parents live in an old inn. Just as they’re closing up for the holidays, a series of strangers parade in and a snowstorm descends, and a mystery is set forward.
6. How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss: Converted into one of the 20th-century’s best loved holiday cartoons, this book is just as charming as its televised (and subsequent films) adaptation. In it, a hard-hearted grinch has had it with his neighbors’ over-exuberant merry-making and decides to ruin their holidays in order to get them to shut up about Christmas already.
7. My True Love Gave to Me, edited by Stephanie Perkins: In this series of romantic Christmas tales by some of the biggest stars in YA literature, you’ll find contemporary romances and historical fiction rubbing shoulders with fantasy and sci fi. In other words, there’s a story for everyone.
8. Let It Snow! by John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle: In this interlocking trio of stories/novellas (adapted into a charming Netflix film), a blizzard strikes the mid-Atlantic on Christmas Eve, stranding a train heading to Florida just outside Gracetown, Virginia. Included on the train are a horde of high school cheerleaders headed to a competition and two other solitary teenagers, Jeb and Jubilee. Independently, they all head to the Waffle House they can see from the train window through the night’s snow. The stories are what happens next.
9. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens: We all know the bones of the story: a miser is visited by three Christmas spirits who attempt to get him to mend his ways and take a greater interest in his fellow man. But the details of the story often get glossed over in the tv adaptations, and it’s worth a return visit to the source material to see how the Victorian Era’s most beloved social crusader gets his message across.
10. A Redbird Christmas by Fannie Flagg: Typical of Flagg’s quirky small-town-centric novels, this novel focuses on a man who must move to the South for his health and the locals he encounters once he does so.

Thanks for stopping by, and I’ll see you tomorrow for our next door on the Virtual Advent Tour! (I’m a little behind in matching dates with folks who wrote to me over the weekend, but we do still have a couple openings if today is your first visit to our tour and you want to join in.)

Welcome back to the Virtual Advent Tour. We’ve reached Day 9, which means we’re more than a third of the way through the season!

Today, I’m sending you off to Beyond Strange New Words, where Jo Kay has a post for us about winter evenings. I’m nearly positive that Jo Kay is our only Tour participant this year writing from somewhere that’s not North America.

I hope you have a great Monday (there are only four more this year!), and I look forward to seeing you back here tomorrow.

(And to those of you who sent well-wishes for the party, thank you. I neither pretended to be out when our first guests arrived, nor burst into tears during the frenzied pre-party period, and the 30 people who crammed into our apartment seemed to enjoy themselves. Plus, I now have a nicely clean bathroom — although I did forget to put the soap back into the soap dish after I cleaned it, and no one mentioned it, so I didn’t discover that until the final guests had departed. Oh well…)

Behind door #8 on this year’s Virtual Advent Tour is a familiar shape. What’s this? I am totally recycling (and scheduling ahead) a post I’ve used in previous years. Why, you might ask?

When I decided to revive the Virtual Advent Tour, raidergirl3 told me to repeat content as needed to not feel burnt out. Today requires that advice.

My tree-trimming party is due to start in 10 hours and I am expecting to squeeze 30 people into my junior one-bedroom apartment. I am exhausted, but am not remotely ready. So, here we are.

How to throw a Christmas party:

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Welcome back to the Virtual Advent Tour! Today is the end of our first week, so I hope the season has been going well for you so far.

We are big music listeners in my family, and our tastes are broad, particularly at the holidays. My dad’s Christmas music collection numbers in the hundreds, and mine is catching up, having overflowed the milk crate I keep it in a few years back. In fact, while in New York last month, I bought a new Christmas cd based on nothing more than the fact that it was one.

As kids, we listened to vinyl and the mix tapes Dad made, and our favorites included his holiday recordings, which later moved to cd as the media changed.

For many years now, I’ve also made an annual Christmas cd. In fact, I wrote about my process for one of my very first Virtual Advent Tours, and I have shared songs off my cds on occasion over the years.

This year, I’ve been auditioning music intermittently since mid-November, but listened to quite a few tunes while working late earlier this week. While I may share some of the new songs I’m considering later in the tour, today I thought I’d give you a trio of the songs that made it onto last year’s cd.

First up we have The Sugarpills performing “Christmas Is the Time to Say I Love You,” originally written and recorded by Billy Squier. Their pared down version of the song gives it an earnestness I like:

Second, we have “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” performed by Miley Cyrus and Mark Ronson and featuring Sean Ono Lennon on the song his parents wrote:

Finally, we have Leilani and the Distractions with their klezmer adaptation of Johnny Marks’ “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” I’m a sucker for reworkings and mashups of well-known songs, so my mixes often include at least one:

Today, we’ll be cleaning our apartment in preparation for our tree-trimming party on Sunday, and I’m looking forward to finally getting a chance to listen to Dad’s 2019 Christmas mix while I do it. I hope your Saturday also includes some musical highlights, however you prefer them.

I’ll see you back here tomorrow. Oh, and if you’d like to join in on the fun of the Virtual Advent Tour, leave me a comment and we can set you up with a date. We still have openings throughout the rest of Advent.