25 Days of Christmas - Day 1, favourite Christmas song

So, as mentioned at the end of my last post, I'm going to try doing a posting meme. Specifically, after softfruit's example, a 25 Days of Christmas one.

( This is the list which I will be using )

So, today I have to identify my favourite Christmas song. Quite a difficult task, actually, because I unapologetically love Christmas music. I love the way that 'Christmas music' is a recognisable genre which does have a sort of coherence, and yet encompasses such a spread of other genres, all the way from sentimental schmaltz to punk. And I love the way that that very fact encapsulates exactly what I love about Christmas itself - the way it creates a sense of connection between different people and places and traditions where one otherwise wouldn't exist. Plus music is just such a powerful tool for generating that magical sense of mythic time, and I for one am very happy to surrender myself to that feeling. So there are a lot of individual Christmas songs fighting for that coveted number one slot in my affections.

For today, though, I will select Greg Lake's song, 'I Believe in Father Christmas':

I love its sad, fragile nostalgia, which I guess is part of what Christmas becomes about when you reach adulthood. I love the fluid guitar line, which sounds like a stream rippling by, and the light purity of the vocals. And I love the whole genre which Christmas music has crossed over into here - post-hippy era guitar ballads lamenting the state of the world, sung by people with flares and long hair.

There's actually very little music I don't love from the 1970s, and it is part of exactly what I love about that decade that it seems to have managed to be such a golden age of Christmas music as well. So it was more or less inevitable I was going to choose something from that decade. Close contenders included Boney M's 'Mary's Boy Child', Mike Oldfield's 'In Dulci Jubilo' and The Wombles 'Wombing Merry Christmas' (don't even dare to judge me!). But this one wins today.

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Day 02- Which has been your favourite Christmas of all time?

It's hard to be entirely sure, of course, because there were so many childhood ones which have all blurred into one now, but looking back through my LJ it seems that Christmas 2004 was pretty much everything I could possibly ask for. I was in the middle of my year working at Queen's University Belfast at the time, and had had a gruelling first term there, but the Christmas vacation meant a welcome respite from that, and the general warm feeling of a return to the comforts of the childhood home. It also seems to have brought a perfect combination of Christmas activities and events as follows, which I really enjoyed throwing myself into:

• Christmas meal with my Bristol undergraduate buddies in London
• Travelling straight up to Birmingham afterwards for my Dad's 60th birthday, and finding that even though he'd been saying it wasn't important and he didn't mind if I wasn't there, he had saved opening all his presents until I arrived that evening
• One of the best ever of the family Christmas parties which we used to host at my parent's home in Birmingham
• A carol event on the village green opposite my primary school, complete with incredibly cute children from that school singing 'Away in a Manger' in Brummie accents
• Roast duck, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone on TV and actual snow on Christmas day

I guess it fell in that precious window when my sister and I were both grown-up enough to be participating in Christmas as full adults, and yet with few enough responsibilities for it to be an extended festive period rather than a few snatched days, while my parents were still both in full health and we had no reason to believe that that wouldn't continue to be the case for many years to come. Not, as it turned out, entirely true, but I am glad that we had such Christmases while we could.

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