A White Christmas!

Nashville in the 1960s

A White Christmas!

It's doesn't happen very often in Nashville. In fact, it hasn't occurred here since way back in 1969. That's 40 years ago!

According to an Associated Press article (November 26) I found at NewsChannel5.com there's only about a 13% chance of it happening this Christmas (about the same odds as Louisville, KY and surprisingly slightly better than the odds this year for New York City, NY which are only 10%).

I do clearly remember the White Christmas snow in Nashville in 1969. Having started college at Peabody that fall, I was no longer active in Sing-Out South, but that didn't keep a bunch of us, both current and former cast members,(Molly, Henry, Gene, Debbie and others) from the getting together and going to Midnight Mass (I found my non-Catholic friends particularly liked staying up late and attending this service).

My memory was we went to the chapel at the old Saint Thomas Hospital where then-Father Ed Johnston said the Mass. It was wonderful gathering up and around the altar and seeing old friends, especially my high school friends who were coming home after their first semester away at college.

But it was also a bitter-sweet time. One of my Father Ryan classmates had been killed in a single-car wreck just after coming home, and then my Aunt Dot Shelton died of a heart attack just few days later. We had buried her on December 24.

As I came home in a driving rain that night, the idea of a White Christmas didn't look very promising, but sure enough, when I got up in the morning, there was 2 inches of snow on the ground!

Now it used to snow a lot more in Nashville than it does today. In fact I can remember a White Christmas and a White New Years back in 1963 with big snowstorms blanketing the city with several inches of the white stuff twice in a week. So little did I realize on that December 25 morning so many years ago, I was looking at something that would not happen again in our town for at least 4 decades.

In the house I grew up in, "White Christmas" always meant this Christmas Album by Bing Crosby. My father purchased this LP back in the early 1960s, and it just wasn't Christmas until he brought out the record player, put it under the Christmas tree, and we started playing this album over and over again. How my father loved Bing Crosby!

Keeping with the tradition, it's still not Christmas in my house until Bing begins to sing, although now it's on a CD and usually I am playing it in my car or on my computer. So many memories of Christmas' long, long ago go through my mind every time I play it. Here, courtesy of YouTube, is the title song of the album, WHITE CHRISTMAS, as it first appeared in the movie HOLIDAY INN back in the 1940s....

To sum it all up, I would say December has always been a magic month for me, and not just because of Christmas.

My birthday is December 13th and my father's was the 14th. Now my grandson, Shaun, has a December 19th birthday (he will be 3 this year), while his dad (my son-in-law, Mike Rosenhagen) oberves his birth the very next day on December 20th.

How interesting and special to have the generations with their birthdays back to back on days during the holiday season in December!

Happy Holidays to all!

Please come back next week for another Sing-Out South holiday memory.

If you have any memories to leave please do so below or e-mail them to me. Thanks!