There were two major holiday traditions in the Thelen household
\nwhen I was a little boy. The first was that it was almost a
\nguarantee that I would get sick sometime between the 20th and New
\nYear’s Eve, meaning either Christmas or my birthday would be
\nadversely affected. (Sure enough, as I write this, both my wife and
\nI are laid up – my wife with a cold, me possibly with pneumonia.
\nJoy!) The other tradition was that Andy Williams’s album
\nMerry Christmas<\/i> would find its way to our stereo.<\/p>\n
When I got my own place, I found a copy of this at my local used
\nrecord shop (which I still miss since moving away from it), and it
\ntoo has found a regular place in our Yuletide celebrations. And
\nwhile this album shows its age at times, it still has some great
\nperformances from someone whose influence on popular music might
\nnot be recognized by the younger generation.<\/p>\n
I’ll always remember this album for Williams’s jazzy rendition
\nof “Sleigh Ride,” possibly
\nthe<\/i> version I’ll always cherish in my life. It truly feels
\nlike Williams is having fun with this song – as well as other
\nmaterial scattered throughout this album.<\/p>\n
Chances are, if you didn’t grow up with
\nMerry Christmas<\/i> in your album library, some of these tunes
\nmight not be as familiar as others are today. Two examples of this
\nare “Christmas Holiday” (another jazzy number which sounds like a
\nlot of fun, even today) and “Some Children See Him”. The latter
\ntrack came from a time when people weren’t afraid to talk about the
\nseason for what it is – namely, the remembrance of the birth of
\nJesus. And while this particular number drags a bit for me, it
\nstill is nice to hear that someone remembered the season wasn’t
\nabout commercialism – even though this record is over 30 years old.
\n(Memo to All-Music Guide: I love you guys and your research, but
\nthis album was
\nnot<\/i> first released in 1995.)<\/p>\n
All of this said, there are moments when
\nMerry Christmas<\/i> shows its age. Prime example: “Little Altar
\nBoy,” a song which drags on far too long (and would probably be
\nprime material for some satirist to record a rather nasty version).
\nAgain a song from a time when it was cool to mention religion in a
\nChristmas song, it probably captured the mood well back then (and
\neven I’m not positive when this disc was first released), but today
\nit sounds like a dusty relic.<\/p>\n
Still,
\nMerry Christmas<\/i> has performances which are unforgettable –
\nWilliams’s renditions of “Winter Wonderland” and “Let It Snow! Let
\nIt Snow! Let It Snow!” come to mind at this moment. And while this
\nparticular release would probably please our parents more
\n(depending on how old you are), there’s still enough worthy
\nmaterial for today’s generation to sit back and give it a spin
\ntoday.<\/p>\n
Some traditions run deep, and I’m still glad that
\nMerry Christmas<\/i> is a part of mine. (I could, however, live
\nwithout getting sick – but better me than my daughter. After all,
\nChristmas is for kids.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6514],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-36936","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-andy-williams","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36936"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36936"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}