The Big Sandy Mountaineer -

I love Christmas music of all kinds. I am playing it in the car as I drive down the highway to Big Sandy. I am playing it in my living room on Friday and Saturday during happy hour and I am listening eagerly to hear it being played around town.

I love the old hymns maybe the best and I love it when they are sung by old choirs from England and sung accompanied by the pipe organ and sound crisp, and cold and let so very beautiful.

They remind me of when I had a cabin up Alkali Springs on Beaver Creek. I used to love to spend Christmas at that cabin which was heated by a large fireplace, an oil furnace, an oil stove and Ace Powell’s Franklin stove.

When it got so cold out and ice cycles would break off in the cold, and I had a gloriously large Christmas tree all lit up in the living room, that music was perfect for as cold as it was outside, it was nice and warm and perfect for Christmas music inside. To this day when I hear those choirs, I think of Christmas at Alkali Springs.

I dream of a white Christmas just like the song and I very much hope to be home for Christmas. Those songs came out of our World War II and mean so much to me as they were the Christmas songs played and sung by my parents.

I have many CD’s by a piano player named Newell Ober. I love hearing his Christmas songs and play them often. They are as comforting as the turkey cooking in the oven.

Maybe best of all is going to church and singing those wonderful old Christmas hymns accompanied by our wonderful old pipe organ at Van Orsdel Methodist Church.

When I was a boy in that church I used to argue with a friend, Raymond Stewart, about which is the greatest hymn of all. He said that “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” was best of all and my contention was that “Joy to the World” was best!

As I am much older, I have decided Raymond was right and I love hearing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” as much as possible.

Here’s hoping you and yours get your share of Christmas music this season as well.