rus vanwestervelt

When this song was released in 1997 and first played on the radio, I knew immediately that it was Sarah McLachlan singing with the Barenaked Ladies. Two great artists had come together for this rather spontaneous taping of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, and the 1990s instantly had a contemporary classic to call all their own.

It’s hard to believe that it was over 12 years ago that they released this song. Back then (gosh that sounds weird), iTunes still had another 4 years to go before Apple would make music downloads an every day (hour?) occurrence. Copies of this song were hard to come by, and you were lucky if you were able to catch it on the radio (again–back then, there was no Sirius XM, no stations dedicated fully to Christmas music like we have now); you had to flip around to different stations and try to catch it being played between 45 minutes of regular Top 40 songs.

This song became our Charlie Brown Christmas of the 70s and 80s TV world (even CBC wasn’t released on video until the early 1990s); we were lucky to catch it when it played once or twice, it seemed, during the holiday season.  Of course, when it did play, nobody was allowed to talk for those 3 1/2 minutes. And when it was over, you did everything you could to keep Sarah McLachlan’s silky voice in your head as long as possible.

Sarah McLachlan was just coming into her prime with Lilith Fair, which ran from 1997 to 1999 and featured many local, regional, national, and international female artists, including Tracy Chapman, Joan Osborne, Holly Cole, Madeline Peyroux, Emmylou Harris, The Indigo Girls, Lisa Loeb, Shawn Colvin, Paula Cole, among others. For me, this was beyond heaven. And then, to have her record a classic like Ye Merry Gentlemen, well, that was just too much to ask for.

One more note about Lilith Fair: McLachlan is reviving the tour for 2010, and she is seeking out local and regional groups to play when she comes to local towns. Go HERE to get more information about Lilith 2010 AND to download a free mp3 of McLachlan and Emmylou Harris singing Angel.

In 2006, McLachlan cut a Christmas Album titled Wintersong. She’s not done on this list, yet. Look for her to show up one more time later in the countdown.

For me, I’ll always hold on to the memories of what it was like to still have to wait for songs to be played on the radio to enjoy. Those born in the early 1990s will never know what that was like, to have the necessary patience and wait for things that you loved. Now, nearly everything is available instantly, and we, as parents, are finding it an emerging priority to teach patience to our children, a skill that was, for the most part, self-taught all those years ago.

I have to begin by saying that this song, “Jingle Bells,” is probably one of my least favorite holiday songs, simply because it’s been done so many times, yet there there are only so many ways that it can be interpreted (even barking dogs doing the song did not improve its merit with me).

Still, I’m drawn to this particular version for one reason: The Andrew Sisters. Maybe it’s their legacy of being the largest entertainer for troops overseas, next to Bob Hope. Or perhaps it’s the uncanny resemblance my mother and her sister, when in their twenties, share with them. Or, it simply could be the vocals — a harmonious blend of voices that had always wowed my father (and still me) in ways that few other harmonies can do.

Roll up all three into one big reason: Harmonic Nostalgia.

The sisters Patty, Maxene, and Laverne were about 10 years older than my mother and her sister, and they recorded Jingle Bells with Bing Crosby in September of 1943, just two years after the sisters recorded Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, one of their most famous hits. It was during this time, World War II, that their popularity piqued. They were beautiful, entertaining, and devoted to supporting those who were serving our country. There was no reason not to love them.

I was born two decades later, in 1965. By that time, my father had amassed a stack of LPs of Glen Miller, Rusty Warren, The Andrew Sisters, Artie Shaw, and Tommy Dorsey. There was always music in the house when Dad was not at the firehouse, and my early childhood was filled with the vocals and sounds of the big band era.

So when I hear Barry Manilow and others trying to do a remake of this classic, emulating the tone and pitch of every note they recorded way back in 1943, it reminds me that you can try all you want to mimic the masters, but you can never replace everything else they did for that era, or for helping my father define who he became later in life when I was brought into this world. By then, nearly 25 years had passed since he was turned down to fight for our country because he was color blind. Who knows the melancholy that he might have clung to when playing those songs, taking him back to a time in his life when he could not serve while others were fighting overseas. It’s something I’ll never know. I never took the time to ask.

I guess I carry along with me a bit of that melancholy that somehow comes through in their harmonies, a melancholy filled with the memories of a father I didn’t have the time to get to know as an adult. I wish I had the chance to do that part all over again, to spend more time with him on the water, fishing. To ask him the bigger questions in life that might have mattered more to him than, “can I have the car keys, please?”

Once again, I was too busy. He died just months after my epiphanic awakening in July of 1988.

So now I don’t shy away from sharing with my own children the harmonic sounds of my life. After my father died, my mother and I spent a great deal of time together. She talked about the many facets of her life before I was born, and I listened, absorbing every word as I pieced together the puzzle of her life, one memory at a time.

We never have as much time as we want or believe we may have. Harmonize with others, and let them know the beautiful sounds of your life that now blend to create the unmistakable Harmony of You.

Let us turn, now, to the lighter side of the holidays here in good ol’ bawl’more.

There’s nothing like making a little fun of yourself from time to time, and Baltimoreans have plenty of provincial ways that make us, well, “unique” from other states across the country. This song seems to capture all of the little nuances that make us who we are. Love us or not, there’s really no second-guessing where we’re from when you get us talking about our Nattie Boh, our crabs, and our beloved O’s.

Believe it or not, though, this song evokes a bit of familial pride about a hometown I’m proud to call my own. There’s a certain comfort in coming home to a place that so easily defines you. For many years, I’ve taken extended trips up north to New England, a place where I feel an inexplicable affinity every time I am there. In fact, there’s a part of me that still wants to move up to Concord, Massachusetts permanently. I just cannot explain how or why I feel this charge, but it’s there. I walk the small towns as comfortably as if I had worn out many pairs of shoes along those streets in the past. I guess if you believe in reincarnation, you might think that I’m tapping into another lifetime. I don’t know. As I said, I can’t explain it.

But even when in New England, that feeling is deeply personal; my connection to that area begins and ends with me. That’s not the same charge I get about growing up in Baltimore. And this song, love it or hate it, captures that love affair that hometowners like me have with our beloved,  leave-us-alone little city.

So take the time to get a cup of holiday Joe and go down to 34th Street for a little Christmas cheer. Check out the traditions that have defined the place I call home, and just relax. It’s Bawl’more, hon, after all, and don’t you forget it.

And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, a side of me few know…

In July of 1988, I was living with two paramedics on a small patch of farmland close to the school where I was beginning my teaching career. I had just finished my first year and, only one month into the summer, found that I was suddenly lost; it had been the first time in my adult life that I had had any time at all to just relax and reflect. I had spent my entire life going to school, working, performing in shows, and spending time with friends. In that first year of teaching, it seemed like every moment of my life was spent working on newspaper or yearbook projects, drama productions, or prepping for English classes. I had successfully kept my life as busy as it had always been.

Until that June, when classes ended and I had no plans for the summer.

Something had happened to me when I stopped running. Suddenly, I found myself struggling in ways far beyond my understanding. Who was I? When I removed all of the *things* that kept me busy, what was left that defined me?

I had no answers.

In the days of solitude that followed in that month of June, the deep hollowness continued to worsen; it chilled my soul and made me question my existence, my purpose. it made little difference that I was living on the shores of the Chesapeake. Fairhaven Cliffs, nearly 20 million years old, served as a sanctuary in so many ways. But these times were brief respites from my hectic days and nights. They weren’t during the long stretches of time that I suddenly had.

In all ways imagined, I was terrified to learn that I had never stopped long enough to question and ponder my own existence.

It had rained hard the entire first weekend of July, and I was at my lowest point. Even writing wasn’t helping, as I didn’t have the knowledge or experience to guide me through my troubles. I felt as if I were a car stuck in the mud; I understood that these four wheels could free me, but spinning them continuously was doing nothing but making matters worse. As my depression deepened, I stepped harder on the gas, only sinking further into the muck.

That Sunday evening, July 3, the rain continued. I was alone in the big white house when, Tim, who had grown up there, burst in through the side door, radiating with an energy that I had never seen. In every way he beamed with life: his voice, his walk, even in his stance in that large kitchen.

I couldn’t help but ask what had happened to him over the weekend, especially in this horrible weather.

“I have been to the greatest event in my life,” he had said (or something very close to it). “I went to this barn revival in the rain with hundreds of Christians all around me, celebrating Life and Christ and everything else.”

I instinctively shuddered when he mentioned Christ. I had never let religion be an active part of my life. That would have meant turning over control, something I had never been too interested in doing.

He continued. “But last night. Last night was unbelievable. We were in the barn, and the music played on as the thunder and lightning crashed all around us. One of the most spiritual and magical moments of my life.”

Tim beamed as he poured some juice and continued to tell me all about the revival, especially the music. I was suddenly aware of the extreme differences in the energy each of us was radiating. I was spent, depleted, empty; Tim was filled with life, love, spirit.

I realized, at that moment in that kitchen, that life was not about filling up every moment of your life with “stuff” to keep you busy. Those activities did not feed the soul, the spirit, the heart of who you are, no matter how good those activities might be or what the intentions are.

In other words, if you don’t fill the well with love and with a spiritual understanding, you’re going to find yourself exactly where I was that weekend — alone, thirsty for something I did not understand, and unable to tap into the strength of a spirituality that was inside of me all along. I had stayed in all weekend, sheltered from the driving rains, whereas Tim had spent those same days outside, in celebration, and drenched in the downpour of God’s love.

Three days later, a friend of Tim’s came over, and we had a spiritual rebirth that I will never forget. While Kevin played beautiful music on the guitar and sang, I started poring over passages in Corinthians that started to fill me with a love I had never experienced. Since that evening, I have understood the power of spirituality in my life.

Now, the road has not been easy. I have studied other religions, have delved into Buddhist teachings and studied the Tao Te Ching, but I have never abandoned that belief in a greater being, a God so powerful that I know, through Him, all things are possible.

Amy Grant has been the cornerstone of that faith. Her music has made me realize that I don’t have to be perfect; all I have to be is what God wants me to be.

Amy Grant singing “Agnus Dei” blends that day in July 1988 with who I am today: lost but found, scared but reassured. She reminds me that being spiritual doesn’t make my life perfect; it makes me embrace my imperfect life with love and adoration for all things immaterial.

May you find the spirit in your heart during these blessed days…and for always.

When I was only six (just a year older than the picture of me above, when I waited patiently for my school bus to arrive for kindergarten), my sister begged my father for a puppy. She knew a family in the neighborhood whose dog had just had a littler of Peek-A-Poos, and there was nothing she wanted more in the world than a dog to call her own.

I remember her pleading with Dad, cupping her hands together to show how little he would stay, how cute he would be, and how she would be so responsible and take care of him in every way. I don’t think Dad needed much convincing, however. A few days later, we hopped into his truck and headed up the street to pick up our new puppy, Toby.

Toby was a great dog–all black with white paws, a white tummy, and a little white goatee that made him look rather funny when he smiled–a snarled lip with one of his lower teeth protruding from his grin. In every way, he was my sister’s dog, but Dad spent so much time with Toby, taking long walks, playing with him outside, and cuddling with him in the early evenings after dinner.

One of the happiest memories I have of Toby is during the holidays when we would play Christmas music. For some reason, he had happy reactions to many of the songs. But this song, We Wish You A Merry Christmas, drove him nuts. He would bark, howl, and dance in circles every time we sang it to him, drawling out the word “wish” and holding on to the “sh” sound as Toby would join us in full howl. It was as if he were singing along with us.

And so every time I hear this song (the Muppets version, the shortest song in my countdown at just 1:05, continues to be a favorite with my own kids), I can’t help but think of those moments in childhood where every moment was grand–waiting for a school bus, playing with our family puppy (who did get just a wee bit bigger than my sister said when she pleaded her case to Dad that he wouldn’t be a bother at all if we got him), and being with Mom, Dad, or Cindy. There was a newness to all of it, an energy that matched Toby’s dancing and howling every time we played this song.

When I play this song today, my two younger children love acting out the roles of the various Muppets talking about the differences between piggy and figgy pudding (still made with bacon), and every time, my son laughs a little harder at Madelyn singing. When I hear his laughter, I feel that young again. I run the reel-to-reel movie in my head of playing with Toby and my sister as we sing our Christmas songs together.

Some moments in childhood keep us young at heart when we need them the most. May you find good memories of Christmases past to warm your hearts this day. May I be the first to wish you a Merry Christmas!

I think Mannheim Steamroller was the first orchestral group to perform Christmas songs with an edge that really caught my attention. Their cd, Fresh Aire Christmas, was played ad nauseum on radio stations when it first released in December of 1993. Since then, other groups have taken interpretations of holiday classics in new instrumental directions. By far, my favorite group is Trans-Siberian Orchestra. They are most famous for “Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24,” which released in 1996 on their debut cd, Christmas Eve and Other Stories.

It is this song, however, that will forever be linked to memories with my family and friends in winter.

Just this past March, we had a late snowstorm (really the only one last winter to “paralyze” us here in Baltimore–home of the flurry-freakouts), and we went sled-riding with Brad and his family at a local golf course that is all hills and curves–perfect for sledding.

It was at this time that I was also bitten by the video bug by some of my students (Jenna, in particular), and I was encouraged to make my first family video. True–It’s been my only video to date, although Amy is doing wonders with Madelyn’s horseback riding; still, I had a lot of fun putting together a little video of our snow ride. If you’re logged onto Facebook (I’m not sure if we have to be friends or not), then you can view this video (or should be able to!) with no problems HERE. :)

There’s something about documenting an event, though, that makes it seem even more memorable as time goes by. Even with just the passing of several months since we went sledding, I look back at that video and remember those few hours as being some of the best ever spent with our friends.

I know that’s not true. There have been many, many times when we’ve gotten together, and I know that we’ve all shared such wonderful times that would challenge our snow event as “the best” there ever was. Still, the simple documentation of the event makes every moment of it more permanent, more memorable in our minds.

Now, every time I hear this music, I think of the generic abstracts of family, having fun with friends, spending time in the snow. But most of all, I remember the smiles on the faces of our children as they battled the bigger hills, the moments spent together, the memories that they made that they will be referring back to as they get older. It’s in our efforts to document, to record, to make a statement that we were here that is most important. To freeze those moments so we may look back on them fondly and with a smile, to know that love can be captured in still frame and be preserved for a lifetime.

For me, it reminds me of sledding many years ago with my sister on our little slopey street in front of our childhood home. Not only were our friends sledding with us, but all of our parents too. It was one of those neighborhood events that just happened spontaneously with each new snow. The old traditional Flexible Flyers would sail down that snowy road, and we would be screaming just as loud as our parents who had slipped back into their own youths, remembering the days when snowfalls really did paralyze Baltimore.

I hope you can view the video. Although it is 7 minutes of two families sliding down hills having fun, I’d like to think it’s a little bit more than that. It’s a part of history that, perhaps, will rekindle memories of your own when you played in your First Snow, all those years ago.

Just last week, Bruce came to Baltimore and took requests from the audience for songs to sing. One of the few requests he accepted was this song, with which he helped bring a contemporary sound to a timeless classic.

Who doesn’t know this version of the song that was written and performed way back in November of 1934? Springsteen first did his rendition in 1975, and ever since then, just about every one of us has grown up cheering on his bantering with Clarence and the crowd.

For me, it’s memories of driving around in my first car lovingly named Deuce, a 1968 Ford Falcon that had seen so, so many better days. When I was a member of the Smile Merchants, traveling to area hospitals and day-care centers during the holidays (not one of them to be outdone by our trip to Hopkins Children’s Hospital, where we were lost for hours while trying to get home), Deuce played Bruce loud and often to and from all of our shows.

It’s that playfulness, that good spirit, that fun that he has with this song, his band, and the entire audience (as well as all of us who continue to listen) that makes me love this song so much. To love what you do (and do what you love) — that is the secret to our happiness — today, tomorrow, and all of the glorious days yet to come.

I’ve already mentioned it once in the early stages of this countdown, and undoubtedly, I will mention it several times more before we hit number 1. Christmastime is synonymous, in so many ways, with the time spent with Brad and his family all throughout the year.

Brad’s parents, Bob and Bev, were my “second set.” They provided a place where I always felt at home, secure, at peace, and happy. From 1981 to the mid-1990′s, I had a sanctuary to call home if I ever needed to get away or just feel loved in a way that had no attachments or conditions.

Now, I have to stress that there was never a problem in my own home. My parents were wonderful in every way, as were/are my brothers and my sister. There was just something about Bob and Bev’s home, though, that attracted so many of us and made us feel safe. A home away from home, even if we were just minutes away from our folks.

Perhaps more than any other time of year, though, it was Christmas that defined their love and generosity. Their Christmas celebrations were unparalleled. In fact, the lower rooms of their home were always decorated for the holidays, with lights, a tree, and tinsel. There’s something about keeping the magic of Christmas with you year-round.

Anyway, I don’t exactly know why, but this song, as sung by Burl Ives, has always reminded me of Bob and of his festive, happy, loving spirit of Christmas that he radiates each day of the year. His health has declined recently, and I continue to keep him in my thoughts and prayers as we move toward Christmas day.

For Bob, it is more about the celebration of Christ’s birth than it is about the gifts. It’s always been that way. He is such a spiritual man, and he will be the first person to tell you it is God’s love that beams through him, reaching all of us.

Maybe we all need to do that. Reach deep inside of us, whatever our beliefs, and embrace more fully the spirit that defines our happiness, our path, our origins of love. Through this deeper understanding of life, may all of our days — not just at Christmastime — be a little more jolly.

For this classic, I share with you a story I wrote in 2000 that was published in Baltimore’s Child. Enjoy!

Electric Christmas, by Rus VanWestervelt

Copyright 2000

It is the last Friday in November, just after our dinner of leftovers and well after sunset. We leave the house with food still on our plates, lights left on. We have little time left.

“Hurry,” I say to them. “Into the car! We’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Did I remember the tapes? Oh no! Don’t tell me I forgot the tapes!” My wife double-checks our daughter’s booster seat belts, then double-pats her coat pocket with confidence.

“I have both of them, right here. Let’s go.”

Always a step ahead of me; thank goodness!

She slides into the seat next to Holland Grace’s booster, shuts the door tightly, and straps herself in. I turn over the motor and adjust the rearview mirror. My wife and I lock eyes.

“Ready?”

She nods, and Holland confirms our status. “Let’s Go, Daddy!”

I ease out of the driveway, synchronously getting a tape in handoff from my wife and inserting it into the player. The leader tape seems interminable.

“Daddy? Time yet?”

Just then, the leader ends, and Bing Crosby’s silky voice stills the air. “I’m dreaming, of a White Christ-mas….”

A chorus of sighs fills the car, and we are on our way.

No, we’re not the Von Trapp Family Singers fleeing our homeland; we’re just a Baltimore family continuing our own holiday tradition, taking to the streets and looking for beautiful displays of lights and seasonal celebrations while our daughter “oohs” and “aahs” as we pass by your creations.

When I was just a bit older than Holland, who is now four, I would come downstairs from my bedroom long before daybreak replaced the streetlights in Towson, and I would wake my sister–six years my elder–with a gentle nudge and a flashlight pointed in her eyes.

“Cindy, are you awake?”

“No,” she’d grumble. “I’m sound asleep. Now leave me alone before I kill you in my dream.”

“But it’s time for Christmas,” I’d whisper, nudging her again, then peeling up an exposed eyelid and shining in a beam of light in a desperate attempt to wake her.

“No,” she’d say. “It’s time to turn off the flashlight.”

“Then you’ll get up?”

“If it means you’ll stop blinding me.”

“Cindy, it’s Christmas!”

With that said, I’d run down the hall, plug in the tree lights, and kneel before the miracle.

“Wow,” I’d whisper. This was the most magical of moments, sitting alone with that illuminated tree and the multicolored wrappings, enveloped in a darkness that sealed the spirit of Christmas all around me. I could not have felt warmer, fuller of that magic.

My memory was not strengthened by what was in those boxes wrapped in the multicolored paper. In fact, I’d be hard-pressed to name you more than three or four toys I received in all of those childhood Christmas mornings. What I do remember is that first smell of brewed coffee mingling with the scent of the pine cones on the tree; the rustling of wrapping paper  as Dad finished wrapping a few last gifts; Cindy and I touching each package, shaking them gently and deciding which  we’d open first and which seemed mysterious enough to open last; our dog Toby sniffing out his own stocking filled with puppy crackers. These memories of Christmas mornings  never seemed to change because this was our tradition.

Years may pass, but traditions stand the test of time. One Christmas, my sister gave me a game called “Operation,” and we thought we were on the cutting edge of space-age technology. This year, I’d like to finally return the favor and give her a virtual surgery game that puts the scalpel in your hand and lets you know if you’ve removed the wrong organ and have sent the patient into V fib. Not that there’s anything wrong with this change in what’s under the tree. We were in as much awe with an electronic board game as we are now with a virtual computer game.  But let’s face it. Gifts break, small parts disappear, and the novelty loses its luster after the lights have been taken down and the tree has been tossed on the corner for recycling.

Traditions don’t break down or lose their parts or dull over time. That’s what makes them traditions, and they end up being the greatest gifts we can pass along to our children.

When I knelt down before that great, plastic, flame-retardant tree as a child on Christmas morning, I wasn’t thinking too consciously about what it all meant. I was too overwhelmed. Rather, I thought nothing but felt everything. It was in me, radiating as much inside as outside, an electric glow which would remain forever that, someday, I would share with my own family.

As adults, we all share these memories with the ones we love. We sit over a cup of coffee or we lie in bed a few minutes longer in the morning and ask what Christmas was like as a kid. He might say it was the memory of feeling a bit older with his dad when they would go to cut down a tree, always on the second Sunday in December. She might say it was trying to stay up all night with her older brother every Christmas Eve to hear Santa rustling through his sack downstairs and drinking the soured milk that had been sitting out for hours.

It’s that electric glow that we remember, a tradition that our parents and family either continued or created for us in childhood.

“Wow….”

I adjust the mirror in the car to look at my daughter, eyes wide open, a finger touching the window as she points out another display to her mom. “Bee-Youtiful!” she says, a duet with Crosby, both of them crooning in the back seat.

So, this is our tradition. Every night following Thanksgiving, we take a drive to look at the lights that all of you string up around your trees, your houses, your lamp posts. We look at the brilliant displays of candy canes and holly bushes and snowmen, and then we’ll head down to Baltimore’s own 34th Street, where miracles and holiday spirits (not to mention electric bills) could never be greater.

And as each night’s route becomes longer and more fulfilling than the previous evening’s drive, we hear from the back seat of our car—over and over again—that unmistakably wondrous whisper of a child experiencing yet another magical discovery, the sound of a child beaming electric inside and out, the sound from which traditions are born.

#          #            #

Number 30: Variations on the Kanon by Pachelbel, as performed by George Winston

I’ve always been a big fan of George Winston. His piano music has soothed me through the toughest of days and has given me hope and inspiration when I believed none remained. This particular piece is very special to me, as it bridges Thanksgiving with the beginning of the Christmas celebration.

Winston plays the song as softly as he does with profound intensity. The rise and fall in this music captures the ebb and flow of emotions for me during this time, the sweet celebration with family, and the melancholy of memories of those who have left us.

My friend Brad introduced me to Winston’s music when I was in my first year of teaching in the winter of 1987. I spent most of my winter break with him and his family that year, listening over and over to the sounds of December, Autumn, and other Winston works as the sweet smell of his mother’s cooking filled every corner of their home. Now, as I listen again to the familiar melody, I reflect on all that has changed since those days of innocence. Both of my parents have passed on, as has his mom (my second Mom, as she always said), and now his father lay in the hospital recovering from a heart attack.

I have much to be thankful during these ebbs and flows in my life. Our departed have left us with gifts of their own to appreciate our lives with a greater sincerity, to love more fully, to appreciate more genuinely. I would like to think that these days of celebration and contemplation enrich our lives long after our cheers of the new year have fallen silent on the quiet streets of 2010.

May each of you be blessed with good memories and reflections today. I am grateful for all that you have given me, and I will do my best to pass on your kindness and love to others along the way. <3