"Holiday" music came out this week. But which Holiday?
Tuesday evening I went to see The Meshuga Nutcracker, a film of the Channukah Musical. It was cute and funny, in parts, and in others a bit strained. I think it would have worked brilliantly as an actual musical on stage, but needed some help being translated to film. It was a little bit too "Look here we are making a film and pretending it is a play" to really work. Or maybe they really were just filming the play, and there was something I didn't get. I enjoyed it, but it could have been fabulous.
It wasn't well attended, and that could just be a Tennessee thing, although I'd like to think it was also because the actual ballet, Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Ballet, was being performed downtown, although I am probably fooling myself it I believe that was all that was involved. I would have liked to have done both, but even I knew that was never going to work.
I came out of the movie theater with the latke song roiling about in my head, and I knew I needed to make a batch of latkes, although it could wait as it was late and I had already eaten. When I was young and naive, and probably a bit arrogant as well, I couldn't imagine that anyone would need a recipe for latkes. That was before I ever had a bad latke, or potato pancake, as my non-Jewish family and friends referred to them, or before I realized the way the term "traditional" is loaded: Tradition is whatever your grandmother made, and someone else's grandma is always wrong. Now I am old enough to know that tradition is really a mixed bag, as is the idea of authenticity.
Yesterday, however, I made latkes. I also listened to holiday music. I started the day with a new CD I had purchased this year, Veni Domine by the Sistine Chapel Choir. I purchased it because it said music for Advent and Christmas in the title, and I like Advent, and Advent music. It is not Christmas yet, after all, and Christmas lasts for 12 days. I am too much a child of the Anglican Tradition, a child whose mind remains entranced by the 12th night parade in Madrid and waiting for the wise men to come and fill my shoes with gifts. The Veni Domine CD was also a bit of a change for me, simply due to its more general nature as an assortment of songs and carols. I do listen to choral music: I listen to Handel's Messiah every year on Christmas Day, and usually also listen to Berlioz's L'Enfance du Christ at least once during the season, but George was the one who could listen to choirs singing carols for hours on end.
By the time evening rolled around and I was actually making latkes, I was no longer listening to carols. It seemed time for celebrating another holiday, and, even though Channukah is already over, I listened to Itzhak Perlman's collection, Holiday Tradition, a compilation of traditional Israeli and Eastern European music. I can't actually say that I've listened to this as a Holiday album all that much, Jewish Holidays, yes, and Channukah is a Jewish Holiday, but it was not one George particularly observed. A lot of the music is seasonally appropriate however, and it is relaxing and joyous music.
I made my latkes with a combination of shredded and finely grated potatoes, and I don't use flour, but the potato starch that accumulates in the bottom of the bowl after soaking the grated potatoes, a trick I learned from George's Aunt Hilda. And I served my latkes with pork chops, definitely not kosher, and roasted mushrooms, including some lovely black chanterelles. I didn't eat half of that food. But the leftovers went into a lovely hash, some of which I had this morning for breakfast.
I can't say that I only listen to classical music at Christmas, or that I don't like Christmas carols either, although I get tired of hearing them everywhere I go, especially now that many places start playing them before Thanksgiving. Nor can I say that my holiday music choices are particularly profound. I've listened to my favorite Christmas album, A Charlie Brown Christmas, several times already and it always makes me smile and feel generous and happy and filled with joy. Charlie Brown is part of my lifetime Christmas lexicon.
In these photo montages are my favorite Christmas season albums. I have more of a collection than I realized, and now I've added two more, the new Veni Domine album, plus the Itzhak Perlman album I've had a while, but which I never particularly associated with the December holidays. I don't use digital playlists yet, mostly because I haven't acquired speakers for my iPad or computer, or set up a way to connect them to my stereo system, something I need to look into next year.
My question to you is this: What is your favorite Holiday music? Do you listen to albums? If so do you have favorites? Do you listen to playlists? If so what are your favorite things to listen to this time of year? Do you listen to holiday music at all? Or do you come home, happy to get away from the world of "Jingle Bells" at every turn, and retreat into silence or play something else entirely?