Holiday Favorites

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor

Like many of you, I’ve been listening to a lot of Christmas music lately. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I cam pretty much listen to any Christmas song at any time. I’ve got a little device on my desk in my office that needs only to be asked, and within seconds, Chuck Berry is adminishing old Rudolph to “Run, Run” or I can get a warning from any number of artists, from Michael Jackson to Bruce Speingsteen to The Crystals about how a certain Santa Claus is “Comin’ to Town.” It’s pretty cool.

And yes, it’s nice to know that if I want to hear Cheech & Chong’s “Santa Claus and His Old Lady,” all I have to do is ask, but sometimes I just want to hear random Christmas songs. When that happens, I can just tell my Amazon Echo (you might know her better as “Alexa”) to “Play hoiday favorites,” and off

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we go with “White Christmas,” “Winter Wonderland,” “O Holy Night,” All I Want for Christmas Is You,” Silver Bells,” and the like, from the original artists and some nice cover versions.

Listening to all of these classics got me to thinking, though… it’s a little strange that there are these old timey singers who are really just known these days because of their Christmas songs. Like, if it wasn’t for Christmas music would I have any idea who in the world Burl Ives was? Or Andy Williams? Or even Gene Autry? I mean, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin were big names even without Christmas music and I think we’d all know who Elvis was even without “Blue Christmas” but it’s hard to remember when these other artists like Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby were like huge stars with a whole catalog og non-Christmas songs and movies and such.

Which got me to thinking, 50 years from now, are people going to know that Mariah Carey and George Michael and Michael Buble and the like had actual careers and whole albums that had nothing to do with Christmas? Or will our great-grandchildren think “Last Christmas” was just some one-hit wonder?

Oh, and while we’re here… please stop playing any version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” this time of year. It is NOT a Christmas song…