I can see and hear it. It’s been more than 50 years since the turntable in our house on Cottage Street, next to the hallway by the secretary. It would be sometime after Thanksgiving when the Christmas records would be brought out and played. One I remember well was the Arthur Godfrey Christmas album. I shall have to find it on line and listen to it at some point this Christmas season. There’s only one song on that album that I remember specifically: Mele Kalikimaka. It’s worth listening to, should you not have heard it before.

We had a few other Christmas records as well, almost all of them secular. Gene Autry singing “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” and “Here Comes Santa Claus”. Another singing “Santa Claus is Coming To Town”. We were a nominally Christian family, attending church every week, but making sure that didn’t really slop over into our lives between Sundays and other days of obligation.

I vaguely remember new Christmas songs being introduced. I remember when one year (1962) “Do You Hear What I Hear” was a new record. We bought it the next year, the Bing Crosby release, and played it over and over. But it was a new song, and took me a long time to warm up to it.

We listened to sacred Christmas hymns too, but over the radio. And each of the albums we had were probably a mix of secular and sacred songs.

Strange, looking back over a long chain of years, with my life being centered around the sacred for so long, to remember the secular Christmas music so well and so fondly. I wonder, though, if I’ve made a post about this in years past. If so, I’m sorry for the repetition.

For previous Christmas-themed posts, check out this link.