Mullings An American Cyber Column By Rich Galen

US & Int'l Papers

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Oy, Tannenbaum!

Wednesday December 27, 2006

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From Grandmother's House
Marietta, Ohio 45750

I have just celebrated my 34th Christmas. You may remember that I outed myself the other day as having turned 60, so you may well deduce I am not of the Christian faith.

This is the 2006th anniversary of the birth of Jesus. According to the Hebrew calendar this is the year 5767. That means my pepes have been at this for 3,761 years longer than you have and millennia ago worked out the "Where Are We Going For Chanukah This Year" issues.

In fact, one of the real advantages of a mixed-married - even accounting for the fact that if you are truly blessed you get to be married to the Mullings Director of Standards & Practices for 34 years and counting - is there is never an issue of whose family we will be visiting in which order on Christmas.

Long about the week after Thanksgiving I receive my Travel Orders from the MD of S&P, salute smartly and start clearing out the Mullmobile to make room for:

Huge amounts of boxes, wrapping paper, food, and condiments (as if we are having Christmas on Antarctica and, therefore, must truck in everything we might need);
Clothing (befitting attendance at the coronation of the monarch of a major, MAJOR country);
Presents (Big Presents, Little Presents, Stocking Stuffers and everything - and I DO mean everything - in between;
Angst. Lots of angst. Too much? Too little? Too big? Too small? Forgot anyone?; and
1,249 Christmas CDs.

Here's the problem with Christmas CDs: You get 137 songs on each one, and each one has the same 137 songs as the previous one and many have the word "O" in the title. Not "Oh." O, no. "O." In fact, I spent the better part of last night (after driving home for six hours) unsuccessfully trying to find out why you people think you need to conserve consonants by leaving the "h" off the word "Oh" on these songs.

Here is a list of the actual artists who had produced the Christmas CDs which were sitting on the sideboard with the CD player at my mother-in-law's house on Monday:

Robert Shaw Chamber Singers (Never listened to it, or if I did I couldn't tell it from the �)
Christmas with The Pops (The Cincinnati Pops)
Eddie Bauer Christmas compilation (Marketing, baby. Marketing)
Harry Connick, Jr. (Which is my personal favorite)
Kenny G (which we did NOT play)
Andrea Bocelli (One Italian Tenor)
Luciano Pavarotti (Another Italian Tenor)
Three Tenors (Three, well, you know)
Il Divo (FOUR Italian Tenors)
North Carolina Boys Choir (167 tenors-in-training)
The Choral Arts Society of Washington (Washington, DC which I know because the address on the back of the CD was Wisconsin Avenue, NW)
Bing Crosby (One Californian Baritone)
The Living Strings (Is Mantovani still alive?)
Amy Grant (What could possibly be wrong with an Amy Grant CD?)
The Grateful Dead ("Have a Very Jerry Christmas." Rare.)

I made that last one up, but the rest were all in the stack.

Each of these CD contained one or more of the following titles:

O Tannenbaum
O Christmas Tree (a free English translation of the above)
O Come All Ye Faithful
O Holy Night
Ave Maria (three versions on the Andrea Bocelli Album alone)
O Jesus Grant Me Hope and Comfort
O Beauteous Heavenly Light
O Bambino
O Come, O Come Emmanuel
Chestnuts R - O - asting On an O - pen fire.

RARE ADMISSION

I was going to title this MULLINGS "Oy Vey, Maria" but my younger brother Ron talked me out of it. He did, however, feed me the "Very Jerry Christmas" line, so it was a worthwhile phone call.

END RARE ADMISSION

The biggest problem with CDs containing about one hour, 21 minutes of music per is � they are playing all the time even when someone has turned on the television.

As we have aged, and our hearing has deteriorated to some degree, the ambient noise of conversations, combined with the clanging of pots, pans, plates, and glasses, added to the Eagles-Cowboys football game, overlaid with the One, Three or Four Tenors is enough to make put on your hat and gloves and jacket, sneak outside, sit on the front stoop, and play with your dreidel, singing - quietly:

"I have a little dreidel. I made it out of clay. And when it's dry and ready. Then dreidel I will play."

Pavarotti. Hah.

On the Secret Decoder Ring today: An explanation and photo of a dreidel; the word-for-word translation of "O Tannenbaum"; a pretty nice Mullfoto of my mother-in-law's house in Ohio, and a Catchy Caption of the Day.

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