[Muncle]

I was listening to one of the 24x7 Christmas Carol FM stations today. It was great and all that, but after a while I was hit by a blinding flash of the obvious. It dawned on me that almost every song I heard was one that we used to sing as kids. There were virtually no new carols (anything written in the last 40 years) except for a few lame rock 'n roll numbers.

Got to thinking about it. I was born in '46 and as I was growing up we had a ton of great carols. To me it seemed they'd been around forever, even though many of them were composed and first recorded in the 40's and early 50's. Of course the best ones were a couple hundred years old, but let's leave those out. Anyway, what hit me was that in our youth, we had all the carols, from Broadway and the movies like White Christmas and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and individually written like Mel Torme's Christmas Song.

There might be a few generally forgettable songs from Scrooge, Polar Express, or the Dr. Seuss stuff, but nothing that will be lovingly played every Xmas 50 years from now. 'Tis a pity.

By the by, one of my favorite movie scene and favorite Xmas carols was Judy Garland singing Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas to Margaret O'Brien. I tear up just thinking about it.