Sara Sandstrom, Peak to Peak. When you read the title of this article did a tune pop in your head? Possibly a Holiday song? 

Music has a whole host of benefits on our minds and bodies. Music can reduce pain, reduce stress and help memory. In her book The Power of Music, Elena Mannes says, “Scientists have found that music stimulates more parts of the brain than any other human function.” 

That is a bold statement. Think about it for a while. When you hear a tune it can take you back to your childhood and to a memory that is only opened up by music. Music can bring back a face or a smell and it is like you are stepping back in time. Hearing music can make your body move and sway with the rhythm. It can awaken our souls. 

The Holiday season can evoke strong feelings of nostalgia or sentimental longing for so many of us. We prepare foods that were prepared for us when we were a child celebrating Christmas or Hanukkah. We decorate in ways that the generation before us did. We share family traditions with our own children. And then there is the music woven throughout all the rituals we practice during the Holidays.  

When I hear Burl Ives, Andy Williams or Johnny Mathis sing one of their famous Holiday tunes I am eight years old again. My parents are hauling up boxes of decorations from the basement and my sister and I wait impatiently. When given permission we run to the stereo console to find a Holiday record. We picked out our favorite ones, one album had a red jacket with pictures of the singers on it and the other one was blue and white with a big red bow. All the while my mom’s voice is saying, “Be careful not to scratch the record.” 

We carefully put the vinyl record on the turntable and gently put the needle down. I can smell the Pledge dusted wood of the 1970’s RCA console as the tune It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year fills the living room. We slide the top closed and focus on finding our favorite ornaments for the tree.

For many the Holidays meant concerts at school where we dressed in our Holiday best. The little ones singing Frosty the Snowman and Jolly Old St. Nicholas as parents and grandparents proudly watched. There was always one kid who could not quite get the actions or sang over everyone else a half step ahead that brought giggles from the crowd. 

Middle school band students playing Jingle Bells and Up on the Housetop with a few clarinet squeaks and trombones blatting. Everyone knows they are playing to the best of their abilities and that learning to play an instrument is hard. Have you ever thought about how brave elementary and middle school choir and band teachers are to put on concerts?

At the high school level the music gets more refined. I can not hear Leroy Anderson’s Sleigh Ride without feeling my alto saxophone in my hands, the reed vibrating on my lips and my toe tapping. 

Oftentimes the religion we embrace in our lives, or not following any religion, determines how we celebrate holidays in December.

For me, the Christmas season starts with Advent and goes to Epiphany. When your dad is a Lutheran pastor that means many church services, many Advent and Christmas hymns, a children’s program full of music to practice and perform and my favorite, the late night Christmas Eve candlelight service. I loved how the candlelight danced in the sanctuary and how people’s faces looked in the warm soft glow. 

Silent Night was sung in English and German. I could always hear my dad’s voice from the front of the church and my mom next to me harmonizing. The tone was one of subdued celebration and reflection. There was a stillness and peacefulness to the service that was only experienced on Christmas Eve. Every year I heard my dad read the Christmas story from the Bible. I would sing the familiar hymns and every year burn my finger on the hot wax that dripped down the candle. 

If you are Jewish, Christian, celebrate Kwanzaa, combine different traditions or simply believe in the idea of a season of giving, December is a month of lights, candles, joy and music.  

Now I know the Holidays are not easy for everyone. My hope is that the Holiday season brings everyone some happiness during the dark winter months. I hope everyone has at least one Holiday song that kindles a heartening memory and makes you smile.

“Music, once admitted to the soul, becomes a sort of spirit, and never dies.” ~Edward Bulwer Lytton 

(Originally published in the December 10. 2020, edition of The Mountain-Ear.)