For those who enjoy longish tales (probably my older ASR contemporaries), here is some background that influenced my taste in Christmas and classical music.
I am a religious agnostic who was born to the wayward daughter of a hard-core "Christian Reformed" protestant family in Northern Indiana. I was four years old when my alcoholic parents divorced in 1945, and spent the next six years old being shuffled from family-to-family, first in Goshen, Indiana, later in Kalamazoo, Michigan, until being adopted at age 10. Most of those families, like my maternal grandparents, were hard-core "Christian Reformed" protestants. That denomination - at least back in the 1940's - was an ultra-conservative Dutch Calvinist group that preached hellfire and damnation, and did not allow drinking, dancing, cooking on Sundays or even outside playing for children on Sundays. Church services were held on Wednesday nights, Sunday mornings and Sunday evenings - and then there was Sunday school for the children before the Sunday morning service. (I know nothing about the Christian Reformed Church of today - perhaps it has evolved for the better - and perhaps my memories from my childhood are skewed.)
From the last months of first grade through third grade until I was adopted at age ten, I lived with a great aunt and uncle in Kalamazoo, Michigan, who were also hard-core Calvinists. And like the Christian Reformed Church in Goshen, the choir and the congregation sang hymns and Christmas carols - but even the songs that supposedly expressed joy sounded like funeral dirges to me. (Strangely, all memories of attending elementary school from first through third grades in Kalamazoo have been erased from my memory - except for a vague recall of riding in a school bus - probably to a Christian school.)
Aunt Anna, like two of her three sisters including my grandmother, suffered from depression, and were treated at "rest homes" after "nervous breakdowns." This was long before effective anti-depressive drugs were developed. Aunt Anna's problems and another stay in a church supported "rest home" led to me finally being adopted at age 10 - by a friend of Uncle Walt. My new father was Reverend Edward van Harn, a former Southwestern Michigan elementary school teacher, also from a Christian Reformed family, was raised on a farm in Holland, Michigan. While in his 40's, he changed his occupation by attending McCormick Seminary in Chicago and becoming a Presbyterian minister. This move, of course, made him a liberal outcast with respect to the Christian Reformed community. When I was adopted, I moved to live with the van Harns in Effingham, Illinois, the location of my new dad's first parish - the Effingham Presbyterian Church. That lasted for a year, but that year in my new home left me with a significant number of pleasant, lasting memories.
After that year in Effingham, my dad accepted an offer to become the pastor of Marquette Presbyterian Church on the Southwest side of Chicago, where I lived until heading off to college in 1960 at age 18. And that set the stage for acquiring a bit of culture - including music. I took piano lessons for about three years in Chicago, but soon realized that my playing was mechanical, and I did not have a passion for playing classical music.
My dad raised the funds to add a big sanctuary to his new church assignment, and that included a new Hammond B3 organ and its big Leslie speaker. A few years later when I was a high school student, my dad had a secretary named Janet Carlson, a beautiful young woman with an incredible singing voice. She was a classically trained vocalist, and her solos in the church transformed my perception of what the female voice could sound like. Of course, this was also the time that I was an usher for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Fritz Reiner, which further influenced my musical tastes. However, in daily life, I listened mostly to the pop music of the day, and was in 8th grade when songs like "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and the Comets topped the charts and helped to move rock and roll into the mainstream.
And that brings me - finally - to the main topic of this post...
I no longer celebrate Christmas on my own, but I do participate in holiday activities with friends. I'm an agnostic with some remaining ties to the words of Jesus (especially the beatitudes) and still enjoy some Christmas music - especially classical and choral. I play uplifting holiday music - Christian and other - in December at the local weekly international market rather than my usual up-beat mix of Latin jazz and dance tunes, world reggae, and Caribbean music.
But I still enjoy well-performed Christmas music -regardless of tempo if it is performed well. One of my most memorable Christmas music experiences was one that my late partner Lois and I stumbled upon after a late December hike. We had just spend a couple of hours walking along the Marin County levees of the salt-marshes that line the shores of San Pablo Bay, the northern arm of San Francisco Bay. While returning to our car, we noticed that the parking lot at St. Vincent's Boys School was full. Then we heard Christmas music coming from the school's church, a historic backroads Spanish mission-style building, named "The Most Holy Rosary Chapel" (picture below). The chapel's front door was ajar, so we sat on the step just outside the main entrance to listen. A man standing in the foyer just inside the entrance noticed us, and came to see what we were up to. We told him we had heard the beautiful Christmas music while walking by and just wanted to listen to it. Surprisingly, in spite of our hiking clothes and boots, he invited us in to sit in the back and enjoy the rest of the concert, performed by a small chamber orchestra. What a treat! The following year, we purchased tickets for that same Christmas concert.
However, my very favorite Christmas music is still the acapella singing of Chanticleer, a 12-voice men's vocal ensemble. Lois and I attended two of their Christmas concerts back in the late 1990's, first at the historic Mission Dolores Basilica in San Francisco...
...and the next year we attended the Chanticleer Christmas Concert at the Saint Ignatius Cathedral on the University of San Francisco Campus...
Although I mentioned earlier that I do not enjoy poorly sung (by a congregation) Christian hymns, even though this is not upbeat, high-energy music, I do enjoy such music when performed by world-class choral groups in an excellent acoustical environment such as Minnesota's St. Paul's Cathedral in the below video.
I am a religious agnostic who was born to the wayward daughter of a hard-core "Christian Reformed" protestant family in Northern Indiana. I was four years old when my alcoholic parents divorced in 1945, and spent the next six years old being shuffled from family-to-family, first in Goshen, Indiana, later in Kalamazoo, Michigan, until being adopted at age 10. Most of those families, like my maternal grandparents, were hard-core "Christian Reformed" protestants. That denomination - at least back in the 1940's - was an ultra-conservative Dutch Calvinist group that preached hellfire and damnation, and did not allow drinking, dancing, cooking on Sundays or even outside playing for children on Sundays. Church services were held on Wednesday nights, Sunday mornings and Sunday evenings - and then there was Sunday school for the children before the Sunday morning service. (I know nothing about the Christian Reformed Church of today - perhaps it has evolved for the better - and perhaps my memories from my childhood are skewed.)
From the last months of first grade through third grade until I was adopted at age ten, I lived with a great aunt and uncle in Kalamazoo, Michigan, who were also hard-core Calvinists. And like the Christian Reformed Church in Goshen, the choir and the congregation sang hymns and Christmas carols - but even the songs that supposedly expressed joy sounded like funeral dirges to me. (Strangely, all memories of attending elementary school from first through third grades in Kalamazoo have been erased from my memory - except for a vague recall of riding in a school bus - probably to a Christian school.)
Aunt Anna, like two of her three sisters including my grandmother, suffered from depression, and were treated at "rest homes" after "nervous breakdowns." This was long before effective anti-depressive drugs were developed. Aunt Anna's problems and another stay in a church supported "rest home" led to me finally being adopted at age 10 - by a friend of Uncle Walt. My new father was Reverend Edward van Harn, a former Southwestern Michigan elementary school teacher, also from a Christian Reformed family, was raised on a farm in Holland, Michigan. While in his 40's, he changed his occupation by attending McCormick Seminary in Chicago and becoming a Presbyterian minister. This move, of course, made him a liberal outcast with respect to the Christian Reformed community. When I was adopted, I moved to live with the van Harns in Effingham, Illinois, the location of my new dad's first parish - the Effingham Presbyterian Church. That lasted for a year, but that year in my new home left me with a significant number of pleasant, lasting memories.
After that year in Effingham, my dad accepted an offer to become the pastor of Marquette Presbyterian Church on the Southwest side of Chicago, where I lived until heading off to college in 1960 at age 18. And that set the stage for acquiring a bit of culture - including music. I took piano lessons for about three years in Chicago, but soon realized that my playing was mechanical, and I did not have a passion for playing classical music.
My dad raised the funds to add a big sanctuary to his new church assignment, and that included a new Hammond B3 organ and its big Leslie speaker. A few years later when I was a high school student, my dad had a secretary named Janet Carlson, a beautiful young woman with an incredible singing voice. She was a classically trained vocalist, and her solos in the church transformed my perception of what the female voice could sound like. Of course, this was also the time that I was an usher for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Fritz Reiner, which further influenced my musical tastes. However, in daily life, I listened mostly to the pop music of the day, and was in 8th grade when songs like "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and the Comets topped the charts and helped to move rock and roll into the mainstream.
And that brings me - finally - to the main topic of this post...
I no longer celebrate Christmas on my own, but I do participate in holiday activities with friends. I'm an agnostic with some remaining ties to the words of Jesus (especially the beatitudes) and still enjoy some Christmas music - especially classical and choral. I play uplifting holiday music - Christian and other - in December at the local weekly international market rather than my usual up-beat mix of Latin jazz and dance tunes, world reggae, and Caribbean music.
But I still enjoy well-performed Christmas music -regardless of tempo if it is performed well. One of my most memorable Christmas music experiences was one that my late partner Lois and I stumbled upon after a late December hike. We had just spend a couple of hours walking along the Marin County levees of the salt-marshes that line the shores of San Pablo Bay, the northern arm of San Francisco Bay. While returning to our car, we noticed that the parking lot at St. Vincent's Boys School was full. Then we heard Christmas music coming from the school's church, a historic backroads Spanish mission-style building, named "The Most Holy Rosary Chapel" (picture below). The chapel's front door was ajar, so we sat on the step just outside the main entrance to listen. A man standing in the foyer just inside the entrance noticed us, and came to see what we were up to. We told him we had heard the beautiful Christmas music while walking by and just wanted to listen to it. Surprisingly, in spite of our hiking clothes and boots, he invited us in to sit in the back and enjoy the rest of the concert, performed by a small chamber orchestra. What a treat! The following year, we purchased tickets for that same Christmas concert.
However, my very favorite Christmas music is still the acapella singing of Chanticleer, a 12-voice men's vocal ensemble. Lois and I attended two of their Christmas concerts back in the late 1990's, first at the historic Mission Dolores Basilica in San Francisco...
...and the next year we attended the Chanticleer Christmas Concert at the Saint Ignatius Cathedral on the University of San Francisco Campus...
Although I mentioned earlier that I do not enjoy poorly sung (by a congregation) Christian hymns, even though this is not upbeat, high-energy music, I do enjoy such music when performed by world-class choral groups in an excellent acoustical environment such as Minnesota's St. Paul's Cathedral in the below video.
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