Warming Up and Getting In Tune

It’s Gratituesday! Today I’m grateful for music of the season.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re thinking, that sounds typical.  Except it isn’t exactly.

Mr Grinch (Photo credit: Candie_N (Welcome Fall))

During November I grinched around town. Every store I entered that already had Christmas tunes playing aggravated something in me. I’d secretly vow not to shop there during December since they ignored my personal unwritten rule that Christmas is a December thing. When I couldn’t find an Autumn or Thanksgiving themed wreath two days after Halloween, I swore off another couple stores. Everywhere I went Christmas assaulted me. Cinnamon scented pinecones here, exhortations to buy early and buy often there, and red and green glitter everywhere like a crime scene gone bad.

So on Sunday morning I’m listening to some music online and a Christmas song comes on and immediately my hackles go up, (picture a cat hissing, back arched, teeth bared.) Dang Christmas music, I’m thinking. Can’t they wait until December? Then it’s like I’m hit up side of the head with a baseball bat. Duh! It is December. It’s December 1st.  Helloooooo? Now I can enjoy Christmas music and do all the Christmasy things and enjoy the season.

But I’d curmudgeoned my way through November and couldn’t quite shake off the grouchiness even with it being December.

Bah!

But then, last night, I attended a benefit concert put on by The Red Note Foundation in honor of a wonderful young bassoonist, Kristin Hooker, who lost her life when she was barely twenty years old.  Her love for music and her belief in its ability to change lives resonated throughout the concert. And just like the Grinch, I felt the ice around my grouchy heart begin to thaw and noticed it starting to beat again. In fact, it might have grown a bit in the process of listening to such a gift presented in voice and orchestra.

The Christmas season began for me last night thanks to those heartfelt, sacred soaring melodies.

Secular or silly, sappy or sacred, A cappella or orchestrated, modified lyrics or ancient rhymes, I love it all! The songs of the holidays rate high on my happy list, something I had forgotten, apparently. Now that my internal strings are in tune I’ll enjoy all of it with gusto.

Greenery (Photo credit: Sharon Drummond)

Come what may, shopping frenzied crazed drivers, baking disasters, piles of unsent Christmas cards, Christmas trees that topple over, strands of lights that only halfway work, or picture perfect scenes of family bliss gone awry. No matter. I have Christmas beating right here in time with the music in my heart.