Do you have it? If not, and you play the piano and love Christmas songs, you may want to get one. We had one at our house when I was growing up, and a few years ago I decided I needed to buy my own. I couldn't find the classic version, so I got an updated one that looks like this:
This book gives you words and music (both sheet music and a CD) for more than a hundred Christmas and New Years songs ranging from beautifully religious ("O, Come Emmanuel") to the downright silly ("Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer").
Currently my favorite Christmas songs are hymns from the LDS Hymn book: "Joy to the World," "Angels We Have Heard on High," and "Silent Night." But of the non-hymn variety, the Reader's Digest song book contains three favorite Christmas songs: "Silver and Gold," "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," and "I'll Be Home for Christmas." When I was a teenager, I would play these over and over on the piano, and they became some of my favorites because my sister Blondie would sing them while I played.
We loved "Silver and Gold" from the TV special "Rudolf, The Red Nosed Reindeer" (sadly, it is not included in my new version of the Reader's Digest Christmas songbook) and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" from "Christmas Eve on Sesame Street" (we didn't know at the time that it was originally a sad song that Judy Garland sang in the movie "Meet Me in St. Louis"). My favorite for Blondie to sing was "I'll Be Home for Christmas" because she had a well-trained voice and could really ham it up and be convincingly theatrical with it. We would laugh at the dramatic silliness of how Blondie sang it.
The full impact of "I'll Be Home for Christmas" didn't really hit me until I was older, when I was spending Christmas far away from home on another continent (in France with my first husband and babies), or when Blondie was away from home on another continent (in Korea on an LDS mission), or the two Christmases when Blondie's husband was away on another continent (in Afghanistan and Iraq at war). In years like that, "I'll Be Home for Christmas" gave me that sad nostalgic homesick feeling it's creators probably intended.
3 comments:
Every time I hear this song now of course I think of singing it with you, but I also remember that Christmas in Korea when I missed you so bad and couldn't sing it with you. I sang it to my comp one night as we walked down the street. She said she didn't understand the words but she could feel what it meant to me.
love you, Blondie!
I think that song was written during WWII...I think. Which makes me feel that is why it IS nostalgic.
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