Christmas Music Memories

Nat King Cole – Chestnuts Roasting -1960

(Spring Street)

The vinyl LP spins and the plastic tone

arm bobs as it tracks in toward the silver

ball point-pen like spindle.

The front door opens.  A draft of freezing

air floods onto the wall-to-wall carpet, fluttering

tinsel and tossing limbs of our tree.

The Magnavox consol, in which the LP silently spins,

continues playing.  

Bing Crosby - White Christmas – 1959

(Spring Street)

The 78 rpm, black, dinner-plate size record

churns in a Webcor suitcase-big portable machine.

It sits next to a Stromberg Carlson black and white

TV on a carpenter built counter against our western

wall.

The record comes from an album with pages

of center of holed sleeves so you can read the labels. 

The adults are happy out in the warm kitchen and

want to hear this song. It belongs to them. 

I look out through a storm window at our bitter-cold,

snowless backyard. 

It will be decades before this song starts to belong

to me.

FG  December 21, 2913

I was listening to these songs and these are my memories context.