Amy Grant

Who doesn't love the Christmas season?  Everyone seems happier, there are parties and presents, and music -- the lovely, lovely Christmas carols -- fills the air with love and joy.  I smile and start humming just thinking about them. And, it turns out, I thought about them a lot more than usual this year.  

Last fall my sister gave me an armload of Christmas CD's.  She's totally into technology and, apparently, CD's are relics from a bygone era and I'm just hopelessly behind -- I have an entire closet shelf of cassettes and a chest-of-drawers full of VHS tapes too, so maybe she's justified in thinking that.  

I decided to listen to the CD's in my car and popped the first one in.  It was "A Christmas Album" by Amy Grant.  Perfect title, if you ask me.  I don't drive very often and when I do it's usually not far so it took me a while to hear all the songs.  About half the carols were contemporary which meant I couldn't sing along, but Amy's gorgeous voice is easy to listen to so I didn't mind too much.  

I just realized that this album is from 1983.  We had CD's back then?

In the blink of an eye, it was March and the Christmas CD was still playing. None of the songs seemed "new" to me any more and so to entertain myself, I would try to harmonize.  It was probably best that I was alone in the car. 

The great thing about Christmas music is that it's uplifting.  There aren't any negative lyrics and the tunes are happy and catchy.  Around May, it did occur to me that I was still listening to Christmas carols, but by then I knew every single word to every single song and I liked them all.  Plus it was the only CD in the car -- or at least that was my story when anybody asked.  

And then it was July. Christmas in July is a legitimate thing, right?  By August though, I started turning the music off whenever anybody was going to ride with me.  I didn't want them to think I was weird. 

When September came, I officially decided to listen to only this particular Amy Grant CD for the entire year.  It was about then that track nine started stuttering and skipping.  Instead of ejecting the disc and cleaning it, I just fast forward whenever it gets to that part of the album.  Problem solved! 

My favorite carol is entitled, "Love has Come."  The music is beautiful and the lyrics are haunting.  I often listen to it several times in a row … Or, sometimes, for the entire car ride, no matter how long it may be...  The song always puts me in a good mood.  

While the car was running this morning, I rolled down my window to talk to a neighbor.  "Oh, no!" she said.  "Not Christmas music already!"

Now you and I both know that it's not already, it's still, but after I heard that I realized I'm almost home free.  November starts at the end of this week and then every store in America will be playing Christmas carols non-stop.  

As soon as that happens, I won't be weird, I'll just be quirky.

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