Don We Now Our Gay Apparel

It's the season to bring out your favorite holiday music. Do certain

songs conjure a special memory from your childhood? One moment

forever frozen in my mind is, as an eight year old, sitting on the

sofa in the dark of a December evening in 1964, mesmerized by the

glittering live tree, complete with those wonderful big bulbed lights

and streams of long crinkly silver tinsel. On the radio, Bing Crosby

was singing Silver Bells, scooping up lots of that baritone with each

b-e-l-l-l-l-l-s. It was a magical, goose bumpy, childhood memory I

will never forget. The scene fondly pops into my mind every time

I hear the song.

Then there are the silly twists on songs. One from my childhood is

our version of "may your days be Mary and Bright", which was

incredibly funny because we have a great uncle named Bright (a

family name) and his daughter's name was Mary. We would then

sing, "and may all your Christmases be Luella and Joe", the names

of my great aunt and their son. Well, okay, maybe you have to be

part of the family to get the hilariousness of this one. I can also

remember my youngest sister singing her own little version of

Hark the Herald Angels, "with the jelly toast proclaim, Christ is

born in Bethlehem", complete with her own grape jelly mustache.

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Back in his college days, WT made a Christmas album which

included the song Home for the Holidays. The big joke here is the

line "if you want 'Tubby Happy' in a millions ways, for the holidays

you can't beat home sweet home". No pun intended, since none of

us at the Manor eat too much during the holidays. Not us.

Years ago, WT had a business associate named Kahled. I don't know

exactly how this came about, but we filled his name into the words of

Handel's Messiah, "and his name shall be Kah-led". Kahled? If he

only knew how his name gave us chuckles every time we heard this

majestic bit of Handel. And of course, the kids could never sing or

even hear, for that matter, "don we now our gay apparel" without

bursting out laughing.

(Yes, the picture is a bronze statue of Lenin. WT brought it back

from one of his trips to Russia and did actually see Lenin's body in

Red Square, a strange experience. Our Mr. Lenin wears a holiday

hat every year as part of his gay apparel. Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la! )

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Right now, I happen to be listening to this Christmas album by the

mezzo-soprano Anne Sophie von Otter, one of my oh-so-classy

holiday favorites.

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