Christmas Through and Through, Volume Two

Happy December, everyone, 

As I've done nearly every year since I started this project, the first post of December will be entirely Christmas related. I have four personal recordings from families or family members, and four recordings of professional presentations of Christmas material, and will go back and forth between the two. 

First up is a tape that just about defines family Christmastime. It is simply 42 minutes or so of "Fly-On-The-Wall" recording of a family enjoying the opening of presents and the joy of being together, recorded on Christmas in 1956, according to the tape box. 

(The last few seconds contain a musical performance which the Christmas recording had been erasing.)

Download: Unknown Family - Christmas, 1956

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A very different celebration of Christmas now, a professional and downright staid presentation, from the oh-so-serious and classical music oriented "Voice of Firestone", which started in the early days of radio, moved to television as one of the first regularly scheduled network shows (a very small network of stations) in 1943 (!) and lasted, in one form or another, into the 1960's. This is a recording of a TV broadcast from 1958. 

Download: Voice of Firestone, Christmas Special, December, 1958

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Next, here's an audio letter from an entire family, made at Christmastime. It last just over an hour, and a whole bunch of folks get to be chatty, sing if they want, and pass along everything you could imagine to the recipient of this tape. Imagine in the days before Zoom, even in the days before cheap long distance phone calls, getting this 62 minute tape from your loved ones far away, and getting to spend an unexpected hour with them. That's one of the (many) magical things about reel to reel tape. 

The opening moments are poorly recorded, but that gets fixed after 30 seconds. 

Download: A Christmastime Audio Letter from the Family

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Back to the professional musicians! And I thought this was pretty durn keen. "Sing It Again" was a BBC Radio show which, as far as I can tell, ran at least from some time in the early 1950's into the 1970's. There's no date on this Christmas episode, but it features some very effectively arranged songs, close to half of which I'd never heard before. The Cockney-flavored song that starts at about 5:25 is particularly fun. 

Download: "Sing It Again" - A BBC Christmas Presentation

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Here's another audio letter, in this case made on Christmas and on December 26th, from a family in Canada who was recording the tape for Lenore (or maybe it's Lenora - I hear her addressed both ways here) and her family (The Abbots) in Bermuda. The tape seems to have slowed to a stop a couple of times while it was being recorded. This is just another very sweet recording from another era.  

Download: A Post-Christmas Tape From Canada to Lenore and Her Family in Bermuda

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Here's just under 20 minutes of Chicago Radio programming, from an unknown date and station, which I thought was sort of cool. The music is just from records - although for the most part ones you don't hear much these days - but between the records there are a couple of local stories, a detailed one about the delivery of Christmas trees, and a brief one about roasted chestnuts

Download: Unknown Chicago Radio Station - Christmas Programming

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And this may be an all-Christmas post, but that doesn't mean we won't have an "Acetate of the Month". This one is Christmas related. Or at least, I assume it is, as it is labeled "Xmas, 1940", as you can see below. Its contents are downright disjointed, and I cannot make out any part of it which clearly has anything to do with Christmas. It does start with someone discussing what a dad might like - which could mean Christmas - but then it goes through a man praising for a child, that child speaking about a sporting event, then a mom speaks haltingly about stars (and then some organ music drowns him out). This is a pretty weird one. 

Download: Xmas, 1940 - Universal Acetate

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And finally, our "Very Short Reel" for this post. I'm stretching the concept a bit, as I usually define "very short" as being under five minutes. But I wanted to make this post "all Christmas", and the shortest Christmas related segment I currently have is just over seven minutes. This is a tape from The Simpsons of Springfield (!) to Larry and (I think) Paul. I actually find this tape more than a bit odd. 

After a personal greeting, almost the entire remainder of the tape seems to be a copy of a recording that the sender made off of a radio broadcast - some music, Christmas thoughts from two What follows the introduction seems to be a recording of a bit of a broadcast of some music, followed by some Christmas thoughts from two different people, then some music box music. Then the sender comes back in for a moment with Christmas wishes. 

For all the time it took this person to make and send a Christmas tape to his friends, the actual contents he chose to include seem oddly impersonal. Sort of like sending a Birthday card to someone and inserting into it a bunch of pictures of other people celebrating their birthdays, instead of inscribing it with your own personal thoughts, 

Download: Brief Tape of Christmas Greetings From the Simpsons

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