Show and Tell with the Takalas: Heart of Christmas Blog Challenge

Although I'm behind on blogging some of our fall happenings, I've decided to take my friend Keisha's Heart of Christmas blog challenge. It's a bloggie advent calendar of sorts. Instead of eating a piece of chocolate each day (although I will almost certainly do that as well,) I will blog each of the topics she's pulled together. If you'd like something to help you reflect on the Christmas season as well, I totally recommend it! Now let's see if I can make it through the first ~~two days~~ week.

Day 1: Christmas Music

As a huge fan of music in general and a musician of sorts, I just love Christmas music. Then again, who doesn't? I do have two "things" about Christmas music, though. The first is that I don't want to hear it any time of the year other than between Thanksgiving and Christmas day. I think it makes it more special to only pull it out at that time of year. The second is that while I LOVE the good old-fashioned carols and tunes, I find myself loving even more the new songs that have been written as well as some of the older ones that aren't necessarily standards.

I have wonderful memories of Christmas music from my school years. When I was in elementary school, the whole school would file down to the cafeteria and sit close to listen to the Irving High School band play a few Christmas songs. A few years later, I became one of those high school students, sitting on the front row, playing my heart out on that little flute. We always played three songs: Sleigh Ride, Christmas Festival, and Themes from the Nutcracker Suite. I will never forget the way those songs sound and how much fun they were to play. I still get excited when I hear our version of Sleigh Ride come on the radio. I also had the wonderful opportunity to be in choir in high school and have many great musical memories of Christmas concerts. I sang three Christmas solos in high school- Sleigh Ride (sophomore year,) It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year (junior year,) and Santa Baby (senior year.) So much fun! And of course, who in choir could ever forget singing O Holy Night by candlelight?

It's hard to narrow down my favorite Christmas songs, but I thought I'd post a few of those newer/less mainstream songs that I talked about. You may or may not have heard these, but if you haven't, definitely have a listen! I think you will enjoy them.

SCC- Angels from the Realms of Glory