This post? Is the reason I did this whole series. I figured if I was going to write up something about this one aspect of my Christmas traditions, I might as well talk about more of them. And the really real reason for the post is that I found a Youtube video weeks ago, that allows me to demonstrate what I’m talking about.

Which is the Vocal Majority.

As with Peter, Paul & Mary, these are not people I generally listen to. They’re a barbershop chorus, and I do not especially like the barbershop sound, at least not in large quantities. But I think the existing melodies of Christmas carols confine the barbershop-ness of their arrangements, or maybe they just tone it down, or maybe I don’t hear it as much on these albums, or something. I have no perspective. With the occasional exception (“Little Altar Boy”), their Christmas songs do not sound barbershop to me.

They just sound awesome.

The Vocal Majority is a chorus of 150+ men with some of the most amazing diction and dynamics you have ever heard. Their lyrics are crystal clear, and they can go from full-bore fortissimo belting down to almost-inaudible pianissimo in about half a second flat. How good are they? The rules of the International Chorus Championship say that when a group wins, they can’t compete for the following two years. The VM won in 1975, placed second in 1978, won in 1979, and has proceeded to win every three years like clockwork ever since then. If they manage it again next year, that’ll be a thirty-year unbroken streak.

I promised to talk about my other favorite Christmas carol recording, and I told lady_puck9999 that I would have something to say about “O Holy Night.” Unsurprisingly, these two things coincide. The sound quality on the following video is crap, regrettably, but it should give you an idea of the real thing, which puts chills down my spine every. time. I hear it. You want “O Holy Night,” I’ll give you “O Holy Night.”*

My apologies to all the church choirs and soprano soloists out there, but as far as I’m concerned, they shouldn’t even try. “O Holy Night” rendered by anything less than a hundred and fifty men is a pale subsitute for the real thing. I’ve heard the VM in concert, many a time, and let me tell you — in live performance, it’s like being smacked in the face by a solid wall of sound. When they sing “Fall on your knees”? You feel like FALLING ON YOUR KNEES.

If men’s choruses are your thing, or you want a rendition of “O Holy Night” that makes you believe the angel voices are huge resonant basses instead of sopranos with way too much vibrato, you can buy a recording or three. The Secret of Christmas is the one with the good rendition of “O Holy Night;” for some reason they over-orchestrated it on The Twelve Days of Christmas, instead of leaving it with just the organ. But there are other good songs on Alleluia, and even Twelve Days, which rehashes a lot of songs done elsewhere, redeems itself with “Do You Hear What I Hear?,” another favorite of mine.

These guys, more than anything, are my Christmas inheritance from my father. I have childhood memories (if by “childhood” I mean anything up to and including the present day) of him singing along with “The Little Drummer Boy” — I told you I had reasons of association to like that song — and I think I’ve assimilated harmonic lines from their “O Come All Ye Faithful” into some part of my DNA. They are the sound of Christmas to me, and my father’s the one I got them from.

And every year, I regretfully put their albums away, and promise myself that the day after Thanksgiving, I can hear “O Holy Night” again.

*Ignore the bit where it says “The Battle of Jericho.” That song’s on the video claiming to be “O Holy Night.”

This next CD, I also associate with my father, though properly speaking I don’t know which one of my parents it originated with.

It’s the Peter, Paul, and Mary Christmas album, simply called A Holiday Celebration. This is from some live concert they did — I’ve seen the video — and despite the fact that I have zero interest in or knowledge of that trio outside of this single recording, it’s one of my absolute favorites.

Not everything on it is great. I despise “The Cherry Tree Carol” on general principle, and Mary’s rendition doesn’t help; according to my mother, her voice had very much gone downhill by then. (Mris, you’d probably dislike her performance of “I Wonder As I Wander,” though I’m okay with it.) And, you know, “Blowin’ in the Wind” is an odd choice for the season. But it has a lot of other selections I’ve never heard anywhere else, like “The Magi” and “Children Go Where I Send Thee,” and variety is a good thing to have around this time of year. It also has two Hannukah songs — “Hayo, Haya” and “Light One Candle” — which hold the distinction of being some of the only members of that genre that sound like actual songs in their own right, rather than somebody’s misguided attempt to make Hannukah More Like Christmas. In other words, I believe the songwriters had something they wanted to express about that holiday; they weren’t just cranking something out to provide a Jewish alternative to all the carols. And “Hayo, Haya” is lovely if you’ve got a thing for melancholy, minor songs.

Speaking of which . . .

If there were nothing else I liked on this CD, I would still want to own it, if only for “A Soalin’.” I don’t know if there’s some folklore/musicology term for what I’m thinking of, but it’s in the genre of “beggar songs” in my head, the ones that are about people coming around in the cold of winter and asking for charity, with many blessings for the generous, or for those too poor to share. “Gower Wassail” is another, and “A Pace Egging Song,” though I don’t think that one’s season-specific. (Why do I have these song titles to hand? Because they turned into a story. I should update that page; the story hit print months ago.)

“A Soalin'” is simply beautiful. It’s solemn but quietly hopeful; it has counterpoint and guitar of exactly the sort I love. (And a little bit of irony, thanks to the line “One for Peter, two for Paul; three for Him who made us all” — given who’s performing it.) I very much like “The Magi,” which generally causes my father and I to stop whatever we’re doing and sing along when it comes up on the shuffle, and I’ve already mentioned “Hayo, Haya,” but “A Soalin'” is one of my two favorite tracks on any Christmas album I own. Depending on my mood, it places either first or second. (What’s the other? Wait for tomorrow’s post.)

And if I recall correctly, my father went to great lengths to make sure I would have it. We’d had the CD for a number of years — which may have been difficult to get in the first place; I can’t remember — and it was such a staple of our music rotation that he went the extra mile and got copies for both myself and my brother. Most of my other childhood favorites, I have now because I burned dupes from my parents’ CDs, but this one I properly own. And I’m very glad I do.