It is only 8:15 of an August morning and it is already hotter than the hinges of Hades. The landscape is wrapped in a blanket of soggy schmutz--industrial waste suspended in a lukewarm exhalation from some halitotic giant. The high-pitched whine of what we Virginians call "hot-weather bugs"--cicadas, I suppose--drills tiny, neat apertures through the eardrums and into the brain. And the publishers of this journal, imbued with some sense of black comedy, want me to think Christmas. These days I have a hard enough time thinking Christmas on December 24. Oh well! Here goes.
"I'm dreaming of a white Christmas/ Just like the ones we used to know. " Who used to know? The only white Christmases I can remember were in Pickwick Papers and books like that. Unless one counts 1969. It snowed like crazy on Christmas Eve and we woke up Christmas morning to find the roads all snowed shut and ourselves so sick with whatever exotic strain of flu was fashionable that season that we couldn't lift our heads off of the pillows. That's to dream? No, I prefer to think of the Christmas City. The Christmas City will be decorating the lampposts soon--probably next month. We forego Hallowe'en and Thanksgiving decorations in order to keep ourselves reminded of our place in the Scheme of Things. The lampposts these years are tastefully swathed in evergreens, which tend to get a bit dry by December. (Some vandal ignited the Giant Xmas Tree on the Hill-to-Hill Bridge last year!) One year the Mayor or some other political genius wanted to use giant Day-Glo candles decked out in hot pink and Nile green maribou, but even the citizenry of Bethlehem drew the line there, thank goodness…
There! Having got myself in the mood, I can talk about "The Glory of Christmas." I'm not quite sure how "glory" applies, since it's one of those words that I can't grasp when I think about it. In France it has something to do with the names of a lot of dead boys. My daughter, as a child, thought of it as those rays of sunlight one sees off in the distance, projecting downward between broken clouds. One suspects that here it refers to the unabashed brilliance of a big choir and orchestra.
This record makes no pretenses of being highbrow or educational. It contains nothing exotic, unless one excepts Old Papa Mozart's "Musical Sleighride." It is an unabashed Super Presentation of the most familiar (or supermarket) Christmas songs, played and sung loud and clear and not in that annoying, unobtrusive, sotto voce, pussyfooting way one hears them in the marts. The arrangements are by Richard Hayman, one of the best in the business, and the playing is by Sir Thomas Beecham's own Royal Philharmonic under the baton of Paul Freeman, who surely needs no further introduction in these pages. I'm not sure whether the "London Ambrogian Chorus" is a typo for the Ambrosian Chorus, but everybody knows that the British are natchul-born choristers, so who cares?
You will note modern songs elbowing the ancient carols here--" White Christmas" and "The Little Drummer-Boy" (I have no idea what the words are, but my lack of taste tells me the piece is inspired!) ''Greensleeves'' gets in because there is a Christmas text to that unfading tune. "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," "All I want for Christmas," and "Rudolf the Red'' have been mercifully left out. This is not a record for snobs and the jaded, but one for unrepentant, unashamed Christmas-freaks.
