My father’s Silver Bells anthology was extensive. At some point he began “collecting” versions of this well-known (and cheesy) mid-20th century song celebrating the joys of the holiday season. “City Sidewalks, busy sidewalks, dressed in holiday style, in the air there’s a feeling of Christmas….” Country and Western singers, movie stars, cowboy crooners, pops orchestras–just about every group and singer in the last 70 years recorded a rendition of this song. It fascinated Dad to hear just how many ways a single song could be orchestrated and performed; my mom, my brothers, and I thought it was quaint, amusing, and a little silly. Truthfully, I think his soft spot for this song had to do with his own feelings of loss and nostalgia for a time which he knew he would never recover. As a window into my father’s soul, it is illuminating to note that Gene Autry is where it all started: Silver Bells – YouTube
Today, given the wonders of online music servers, you can call up thousands of versions of this or any other Christmas song at your fingertips, but the children of modernity, unfamiliar with life before the internet, must understand just how much effort it took to compile a collection of cuts of the same song. Most of my father’s hard-won finds were LP (i.e. “Long Play”) records, which he purchased second-hand then transferred over to his reel-to-reel tape recorder; this rare machine had enough magnetic tape to store hours and hours of recording. (I leave it to you to look up both of those ancient technologies on the interwebs). I retain the indelible Christmas memory of the giant recorder, centered on our stereo cabinet, its two 10-inch reels rotating slowly, endlessly, to reveal all the magnificence of this song, over and over, one singer after another.
A few years before he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, my father lost much of his hard-fought collection. Truth-be-told, I accidentally taped over it. I was home from college on Christmas break and wanted to capture a Christmas radio program. I misread the label on the reel, and all his hard work vanished in a few hours of his son’s misapplied fervor. I still think back to that moment when together we realized what I had done. My memory of that instant is more important to me than the song itself….a flash of annoyance in Dad’s face, disappointment, and loss….a look, then a quiet, “It’s OK,” spoken sincerely. Forgiveness. That moment was a better Christmas gift from a father to a son than four hours of a taped Silver Bells could ever have been.
Thank you, Dad.
