It's beginning to look a lot like...

Yes, I admit it, I'm a big Christmas fan. I love Christmas about as much as I love summer. If I had to choose between living in Eternal August and Eternal December, August would probably win out, but only by a smidgen because as I get older, cold makes me crankier. My first point to get out of the way: Christmas is really a secular holiday, or more precisely a pagan holiday in Christian clothing. Sorry, but Jesus is not the reason for the season: the reason is cold and snow and darkness and agrarian seasonal cycles, and the need for a little magic and partying and kindness and reassurance in the middle of the darkest and coldest days of the year. We've made room for Jesus and Santa, and both fit in fine, I guess (and frankly, Santa, as the impulse to give to others, is probably closer to the "reason").

My second point: Now that Halloween is over, the Christmas season can begin and anyone who complains is just not facing reality, because it's beginning whether we like it or not. Granted, I've always had a strong appreciation for the season (mostly because of my mother who always makes Christmas a wonderful season) so I don't mind seeing fully decorated Christmas trees in the local Kroger at 9 p.m. on October 31st, though I do understand the complaints of people who don't like hearing the music or seeing the decorations (or, in the case of my sweet partner, watching the "Santa riding the razor" TV ads) for 8 or 9 or 10 weeks. But because the structure of our economy has come to depend on the longer Christmas season, it's not going away--unless of course we get a nationalized health care system and therefore fall under the sway of godless communists.

I'll be writing about Christmas media over the next few weeks, so bear with me. I'll start with my new favorite Christmas album: A Leroy Anderson Christmas. Issued on CD in 2004, it's a compilation of recordings made some years ago (the woefully inadequate liner notes don't say when, but Internet sources indicate the 50's and 60's). I don't need another version of Anderson's most popular song, "Sleigh Ride"--my favorite version is the Roches' on their Christmas album We Three Kings--but the rest of the album is a gem. There's "A Christmas Festival," a long medley of several popular Christmas carols, followed by three "Suites" of carols, one for brass, one for strings, and one for woodwinds. The sound is cleaned-up 50's high-fidelity, which is just fine for this nostalgic album. Along with my absolute favorite seasonal album, The Carpenters' Christmas Portrait, this album plunks you down in the middle of a past Christmas that really only existed in fantasy, or fiction, or memories made perfect by their distance.