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Christmas

Santa is Coming on Friday #3

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So…we’ve made it to Wednesday!  The Gifts have been bought (and I’m not going to the mall again before Christmas – too many cranky people 🙁  ) and we have started the cookie making.  The cookie list is long so we will need to spend at least another day making cookies.  Since we were home all day today we had Christmas music of one description or another on all day.  Who knew the short one was such a fan of country singers 🙂  We listened to Brad Paisley, Toby Keith and a whole host of others singing away.

Given my choice, I tend towards the classical versions of Christmas songs.  For your listening pleasure today we bring you  Celtic Women singing O Holy Night.

I’m also a fan of the Canadian Tenors. Here they are singing Silent Night.

Lastly, combining some awesome Canadian and American talent have a listen to this!

One of these years I’m actually going to see the Boston Pops live!  I’m starting to feel more Christmas-y!  Tomorrow we are going  grocery shopping and after looking at lots of old Christmas photos that seem to feature the ever popular jellied salad, we are going to learn to make one 🙂 (and step back into the 70s)  Wish us luck!

Santa is coming on Friday #2

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A big part of Christmas is music.  Once Thanksgiving is over, or maybe Dec 1 arrives, the Christmas music is everywhere.  It’s in the malls, it’s on the radio, and in my house, it’s on the stereo.  We have a rather eclectic collection of Christmas music collected over the years ranging from classical to rock to country to kiddie.  Our 7 year old has quite the sense of humor and enjoys the funny versions of carols as well as the traditional.

For your listening enjoyment, here are 4 rather offbeat Christmas songs that you might remember.

For this year’s Christmas concert, the kids had to learn this classic:

It’s pretty funny to see little ones trying to pronounce hippopotomuses!

Next up for your listening pleasure is another oldie but goodie.  Bob and Doug Mackenzie recorded this Christmas song many years ago, yet I heard it on the radio today and had to explain it to my 7 year old!  Enjoy!

What Christmas collection is complete without a little music by the Muppets??  This is one of my favorites!

And lastly, we’ll put in a clip of one of my favorite country christmas tunes.  It helps explain how Santa determines who is naughty and who is nice.

I hope you have enjoyed this selection of music 🙂  Tomorrow we’ll try for some more traditional music and maybe we’ll get to discussing  what we’ve eaten through the years.  Hope you are staying calm during this final week before the Big Man’s arrival 🙂

Santa is coming on Friday!

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Santa is coming on Friday night…..my daughter is very clear about how long she needs to wait 🙂  School finished on Friday and we now have 5 days to wait, with not alot to distract us.  I’ve finished my Christmas shopping for the most part – I need to go grocery shopping at some point for the veggies for Christmas day dinner.  We have stacks of cookies to bake and deliver.  The other day,  it occurred to me that this is the first year that my daughter is asking questions about Christmas.  Previous Christmases.  What did we do when I was a girl.  Do we do anything different now than we did when I was growing up.

Please join us this week as I share memories of Christmases past, favorite pictures and favorite music in anticipation of the arrival of the Jolly Man in Red 🙂

Without further ado 🙂 As long as I can remember, Christmas included going to see Handel’s Messiah.  My father was a huge fan and sang this piece of music many times.  I’ve seen professional productions and  amateur productions.  Imagine how happy I was to find that people have turned my favorite piece of music into something performed by a flash mob!  How cool would it be to be sitting eating lunch at the mall or shopping at Macy’s and find yourself surrounded by singers.  I think it would be pretty cool 🙂  A few weeks ago I posted a Youtube video of a group performing in Niagra.  Here’s the clip again:

A quick scan of Youtube shows a whole host of other groups have copied this wonderful game.  Here is a video of the Opera Company of Philadelphia surprising shoppers at Macy’s.

The man that fostered the love of the Messiah  isn’t with us any longer.  He died many years ago.

I can absolutely see him singing in the food court!  He would have loved that!

So, what cool things did you do when you were a kid?  What traditions are you carrying on?  What ones have you abandoned?