Holiday Tradition #5: Premature Christmas Tunes

Yes, that is my favorite ornament. Which has nothing to do with this particular post, other than I could not find a picture of the Oakridge Boys, circa 1980, to post here and I'm trying to keep up with the holiday photos coinciding with holidays posts.

I need a digital camera. Because I know that's a Starbucks ornament, but I'm wearing my glasses. I can just see my mother right now, backing away from the computer screen and squinting...go get your readers, Mom. Because Santa has a much, much bigger order to fill this year and 'digital camera' won't make the wish list until 2010.

Moving on.

Family lore states that when my Mom and her siblings were kids and living overseas due to Grandpa being in the military, Grandma always wrote her Christmas letter sometime around Halloween, to make sure it would arrive back in the States by Christmas time. In order to get "in the mood" to write a festive holiday letter while her kids were surely running around dressing up like witches and ghosts, she'd crank up the Christmas tunes and get busy with her writing. Sounds crazy, but the tradition stuck, and (at least in my Mom's branch of the family tree) we see nothing wrong with busting out the Manheim Steamroller and the Michael W. Smith and the Burl Ives sometime around, oh, say my birthday. In early October.

Oh sure, there are variations on this trend. Some, like Alisa, want to gradually ease in to the holiday music, warming up in October with the Manheim Steamroller, maybe a little Jim Brickman--stuff that's more seasonal and less blatantly Christmas--before breaking out tunes like 'Thank God For Kids' and the soundtrack to Charlie Brown Christmas in the more sensible month of December. I'm more of a whole-hogger myself, gleefully setting up an all-inclusive 'Christmas Music!' playlist on the iPod faster than Costco can get their trees out on display in mid-October.

So next year, before you go snickering when I call in to the local soft rock station mid-November, demanding to know when my Christmas music will be hitting the airwaves, just think of my Grandma. Doing what needed to be done to get those letters out on time. Because nobody appreciates a Valentine's Day letter, am I right?