The Christmas season is one of my favourite times of the year. Not for gift giving (or receiving), not for decorating, not for cooking, not even for photography, but for the music. I love listening to Christmas music. All types and genres of Christmas music, too: classical, jazz, instrumental, choral, country, rock and so on. This love of all kinds of Christmas music has passed on to the Sprouts. On Friday FK not only sang along but asked a myriad of questions about the Christmas songs we listened to in the car on the way home from town: who wrote the songs, who sang or performed them and why versions were different. Today, JK sang a number of songs at the top of his lungs, to the amusement of his parents and the annoyance of his big sister ("It's not Frosty Santa, it's Must Be Santa!").
One of the family's favourite performers is the Barenaked Ladies (yes, I said it). The songs we listen to with the Sprouts are the "kid-friendly" ones, like "La-La-Lemon", "If I Had a Million Dollars", or "Pollywog in a Bog", from their album "Snacktime" (of which "7 8 9" is a personal favourite of JK). The Barenaked Ladies also have a Christmas album, which has an eclectic mix of Christmas music. One of my personal favourites is "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/We Three Kings", partly due to the energy of the performance and partly due to the clean transitions of the arrangement. I put this song on a Christmas compilation CD for the car (which also includes performances by Emmy Lou Harris, Chanticleer, The Canadian Brass, Raffi, Shawn Colvin, Quartette and Paul Brandt). Below is a version of that song, performed during a concert with the Boston Pops Orchestra (which I have fond memories of watching on PBS with my folks during the holidays as a child).
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