My Christmas Carol

A few weeks ago, I went off on one my favorite radio stations for starting wall-to-wall Christmas music in only the second week of November, a concept I find just patently absurd. On the other hand, now that it is December I've occasionally migrated back to this station and found what I hear not nearly as offensive. I'll probably like it even better in a couple of weeks.

But I guess I've expressed my general frustration with the Yuletide season long enough or loud enough over the years, that I've managed to pick up an unwanted label: of being just another Scrooge.  In fact, each year about this time my own pastor calls me out on it, in church. No less. He refers to me as a "Bah Humbug" and it always draws a chuckle. But it makes me feel a little uncomfortable when people turn around to see what a "Bah Humbug" looks like.

Of course I don't really feel that way. But there’s only myself to blame for my woefully mismanaged p.r. and it probably goes back to a December day some years ago when my favorite clergyman asked me a very innocent question.

 

How are you?

 

Likely, it was a day when I was in the middle of about 18 things at once- all Christmas related- and chose that particular moment to forget to filter myself and likely snapped, "Ya know something? Christmas really sucks" However, that's really not how I feel at all. I mean, I got engaged on Christmas Day for cryin' out loud! What's not to like about that?! So really, I like Christmas and always have, all the way back to childhood.

As a little boy, I'd get really excited once Thanksgiving was over and Dad would trot out his New Christy Minstrels Christmas album and put it on for the first time of the season. Hokey as it was, that record always meant Christmas was comin'. Of course later came the compulsory argument over who was going to put up the outside Christmas lights, and when we'd go get a tree. But it all meant Christmas-time was here.

Christmas really did seem like the most wonderful time of the year back then because, back them I was just a kid. Sure, I was a little materialistic, but what rug rat, deep in his heart, isn't? It's hard not to be when the dominant recess discussion at Kingswood Elementary School) centered on "What do you want for Christmas?" and "What do you think you'll get for Christmas?" Those are two very different riddles and both ate up hours of playground and after-school time trying to solve; all the way from post-Thanksgiving right up till Christmas Vacation (which, before we became such a pansy-ass politically correct country, IS what it was called. And nobody got hurt or sued.)

But finally, after weeks of discussion, conjecture and wonder, Christmas Eve would arrive, kicking off the final hours before these mysteries would at last be revealed.  I was always sent to bed early that night but, naturally, be too excited to sleep. So in the dark of my room, with my little clock radio dialed in to the Christmas music and programming playing on my favorite station, KROY, I'd get up and stare out the window at the Northern California night sky, keeping a watchful vigil for Santa's sleigh. Eventually slumber would come calling and I never did see the old guy, but one night spotted a red light flashing above the Tait's house, causing my childish brain to go into hyper-drive wondering if maybe I'd just seen Rudolph.

 

Ahh, good times. But I didn't discover the giving part until a little later on. 

Out of college and out of my own, working two jobs yet still not really having any money nevertheless, I remember finding great delight in buying gifts for my co-workers and friends. A long way from my California home, in essence those dear people became my family. It was a challenging time, too. It was Christmas 1980. By night I was working the graveyard shift at KGA and during some of the days holding down a part time job in a sporting goods store.

But between gigs and sleep, I was a Christmas shop-o-holic. I usually went at night, after my afternoon nap and before going to the radio station, hitting the closest Spokane mall, Northtown. There I'd spent a good chunk of the evening looking for just the right gift for everyone on "my list". It was fun.  It usually took a couple of nights to find everything I wanted to get, and then another afternoon to wrap the stuff up. But it was a blast. And honestly, I didn't care if I got anything in return; it just made me happy to spread a little holiday cheer among my friends. 

I wasn't keen on decorating and never have been. But that was the one year I decked out my cubbie at the radio station in tinsel and put up a small tree in the place I was living. It was complete with lights and a few shiny balls, too. And it didn't suck.

That was also the first year I had the unique opportunity to work a Christmas Day shift. Instead of just listening to the radio that night- actually very early morning- I was on the radio and playing all those old Christmas songs I heard and listened to when I was little. At 1510 on the AM band and amplified by 50 000 watts of power in the middle of the night, I was making a joyful noise to about a third of the country.  It was awesome!

Though KGA was a decidedly traditional country station, that night the normal rotation was scrapped. Oh, we stopped down for commercials and the ABC hourly news, but otherwise it was all Christmas, all the time. The program director left out a list of Christmas music goodies to play, everything from John Denver and Marty Robbins to Bobby Helms and Gene Autry. Plus secular and sacred songs by non-KGA acts like Frank Sinatra, Andy Williams and the Carpenters. I even played “Feliz Navidad” by Jose Feliciano, and "White Christmas" by Bing Crosby.

And maybe it was this break from routine that had me more excited than usual.  I still can't explain it either, but when I took the controls that midnight I was really fired up. And the caffeine hadn't even kicked in yet.  I mean, I was working but I felt like a little kid again because it was finally Christmas Day!  I could feel the adrenaline rush and almost had to dial myself back in out of the ABC News, when, during our opening top of the hour talk-over jingle, I was the first to wish the Inland Northwest “Merry Christmas!”, followed at 12:05 and 30 seconds with the first song of Christmas morning, the stirring Percy Faith instrumental version of "Joy to the World".

As the song began, it instantly "felt" like Christmas. It didn't feel like the night before, and it didn't feel like a regular 'ol Thursday; not with Joy to the world, the Lord is come blaring  over the cranked-up studio monitors. For a brief moment, I swear I felt a chill go through me. The window behind me was cracked open, so maybe that was it. It was 28 degrees outside. But deep down, I think the thrill came from having the honor of welcoming Christmas and the new born King to the Pacific Northwest, parts of Canada and most of the Pacific and Mountain Time Zones, as well as small portions of the Midwest. Weird.

Weird, because though I'd been raised in a Christian home, my faith at the time was in a deep slumber. I shouldn't have felt anything. It should've been just another day at work. But it wasn't. For some reason it dawned on me that the world that Thursday morning was somehow different, unique. My hands were being used for something more important than just being a middle of the night deejay. Like the shepherds of two thousand years earlier, I felt like one of the first ‘messengers’ getting to spread the Good News, that on this day, to us a Child is born.

Okay, maybe I’m reaching a little, giving myself too much credit and making what I was doing seem bigger than it really was. But I’ll always remember Christmas morning, 1980 because it was my first holiday working on the 'grand stage'. Of course, nobody listens to the radio on holidays, especially in the middle of the night. So while the signal covered lots of ground, my voice may have fallen on the ears of only a few dozen actual listeners. Even most of the long-haul truckers, which made up the lion’s share of thee overnight audience, were likely off that night. Youthful enthusiasm, though, had me imagining I was serving an audience of millions.

 

Not many people are happy about working a holiday. But on that particular holiday, that Christmas morning, I was and still find it hard to describe how honored and blessed I felt to be holding down that very unique job because, for a little while anyway, on that night, I wasn't just a 4 dollar an hour jock; I really felt I was doing something for a higher purpose. In a very tiny way, I got to be a part of the bigger picture, the biggest picture of all- via amplitude modulated radio, spreading tidings of comfort and Joy to the World. At least to my corner of the world. It was an awesome experience and I’ll never forget it.

 

However, later in my broadcasting life doing holiday duty became just part of the routine, just part of being in radio, and, sometimes, kind of a pain. And no doubt I was back to my usual “pagan” self by daylight. Nevertheless, Christmas time would continue to hold a special place in my heart. However the more Decembers I worked, the more my salary grew, the more responsibilities I was given and the busier my life got, the less I was actually “into” Christmas. It became a lot of work, ate up a lot of money and large quantities of time. It was a rat race.

When I became music director at my hometown station in Grass Valley, I fretted over holiday music rotations and how to make it all sound ”just right”. It became an obsession. And for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, I really, really wanted those hours to remain sacred. It wasn't that I didn't like "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer". I just didn't want to hear it next to "O Holy Night". It'd be like putting up the finger paintings I did in second grade next to the Mona Lisa and call them both great art. The very idea was just silly and, more importantly, incompatible with the ambiance and tone I was trying to set.  So I hovered over every last detail, even working every Christmas morning just to make sure a glaring glitch like that didn't happen.

Sure, it was stupid. But every December I became the "Music Nazi" again, drove the staff crazy and worse, began forcing my slowly re-awakening religious views on our entire community. Heaven forbid! But back then, if I could do nothing else in my career that mattered, I was determined to keep Christ in Christmas- at least for 12 hours. Our station was going to sound totally different from how it did the other 365 days and I didn't care how many people I pissed off along the way. It's Christmas, dammit; it's supposed to sound different. That was my sworn mantra.

In addition to making the music “Jingle Bells” free, I also tried to make the hours of late Christmas Eve and Christmas morning commercial free, too, or as commercial-free as possible. But I'd run that by the sales manager and he'd just look at me with a wry grin and say "You're joking, right?" It's like I was asking him to donate a kidney. I should've known better though. Most years, it was our sold-out Decembers that allowed the radio station to finish the year in the black.

Yet that was always the eternal conflict. I hated the commercialization of Christmas. A lot of times it was just sleazy; and all the time it was a pain in the ass. But without it I didn't get paid. So during the last 6 weeks of the year, I wrote and recorded a jazillion spots and slogged through 18 to 21 minute commercial hours; up to and sometimes including Christmas day. Then there was always the last minute bonus spot or two that somebody would slip in and write on the log when you weren't looking. Where'd that come from and how the hell am I gonna squeeze it in? Some days it was amazing I didn't slug somebody. But that's what made our world go 'round.  I got a paycheck and we all got to keep our jobs.

Yet from Thanksgiving till December 26 I hated our clients, hated the sales department, hated my work and hated Christmas. Love, peace, joy and goodwill to man had all but escaped me. Nice Christ-like attitude, yeah? Even the joy of simply finding gifts for people was gone too, probably because I chose Christmas Eve to do go out and do it. So that became just one more thing I had to get done. And by the end of that last frenetic 24 hours, everything the season represented and used to mean had drained away. I just wanted it all to be over. So it was probably during one of those crazy Decembers when Pastor Sam innocently asked me-

How are you doing? 

And I made the crazy mistake of answering him honestly. But I'm not quite so manic anymore. For one thing, I'm not in commercial radio anymore and not on the air anymore or in programming- which may keep me alive longer than if I still was. I've learned to tolerate the holiday better than in the past, too; things are scaled back and simpler. And I like it that way.

While I may never find the same wide-eyed wonder  I felt as a kid, and later as a young broadcaster, when I interact with folks these days I hope they see more of Bob Cratchit in me than Ebenezer Scrooge. Because when I think about it, that's really who I am: just a hard-working guy who now intrinsically knows the true reason and meaning for the season. And in spite of all the other distractions and frustrations this time of year will try and sneak over on me, my goal remains the same: to keep the tender spirit of Christmas alive in my heart.  Not just in December, but all year long. 

So, God bless Christmas. And God bless us everyone.