Mele Kalikimaka

In my house, there were three albums that were played at Christmas: Bing Crosby's Christmas album (see pic), John Denver's "Rocky Mountain Christmas", and the soundtrack to "Midnight Express".

The differences between Bing's Pre-WWII version of Christmas and John Denver's are pretty significant and were reflected in my parents as well. These were their favorite holiday albums. My dad, who wishes that it was always 1950, loves Bing Crosby and my Mom, with her love of folksingers, goes for John Denver.

Christmas was a reprieve from the year-round, daily chaos of my household. Everything was clean, we had tasty food, people were nice to each other, or at least tried not to scream or yell as much. It was so different from our non-holiday life that usually I would become incredibly depressed during the season. I hated having to face the let-down after the holidays ended. The albums were in constant rotation throughout the whole month of December.

Both my parents are big into denial. My father's approach (pre-breakdown) was to live solely in the past, in the "good, ol' days". But honestly, I don't know when those days would have occured for him because his family situation was far worse than ours. Anyway, every year he would play Bing Crosby, put up his trains, and follow a ritual of holiday that has never once deviated in the 34 years that I have been alive.

My mom's denial is totally different. She can't get into fantasy like my dad. She can however work the martyr role like no one else. Each year she would drive herself into a screaming frenzy by baking, decorating, and designing holiday outfits. I remember one Christmas where she told my sister and I that she had stabbed herself repeatedly while embroidering our Christmas dresses because it was 4:00 AM Christmas morning and she hadn't slept in two days!

My mom is a dark, dark woman. The two most depressing songs on "Rocky Mountain Christmas" happen to be my mother's favorite- "Christmas for Cowboys" and "Please Daddy Don't Get Drunk This Christmas". A typical gift from my mom would be one or two true-crime novels. I got "Fatal Vision" when I was 11.

Which brings me to the soundtrack to "Midnight Express". My mom loved the film and the soundtrack and got the tape as a gift one year. That year we all got drunk and danced around to it. After that, for a number of years, we would put the album on later in the evening, after the gifts were open and the adults and a few of us kids polished off the Cold Duck for a Giorgio Moroder freak-out.