Jen Continues a Holiday Tradition

I guess pretty much every family has some sort of Christmas traditions they do with each other every year. Whether it’s taking a family photo in front of the tree or always opening one gift the night before Christmas, most families have a familiar routine they know to expect every December, and we Davises are no different. We always go to Nana’s on Christmas Eve, then open family gifts from Santa at my parents’ house on Christmas morning, then over to Granny’s during Christmas day. That’s our ‘tradition’. But our best tradition (and by best, I mean cheesiest) is our choice of holiday music.

Do we listen to the Burle Ives Christmas album or the Disney Characters Sing Christmas? Oh, no. Better. We listen to Alabama Christmas.

For as far back as I can remember, we’d listen to the Alabama Christmas album no less than 100 times from the day we took the Christmas decorations down from the attic until Christmas day. I’m pretty positive it came from one of those music clubs that were so big in the 90s – you know, send in $0.01 (and $7.99 for shipping) and get 20 cds from this list of crappy cds. Of all things… the Alabama Christmas album. And we actually lost the first one for a few years, and then one day a couple of years back Mom or Dad came home from Half Price Books with a grin – “Look what I found.” And it was like not a day had passed. We all still knew the words to every song, from Thistlehair the Christmas Bear (spreading the good news everywhere…) to Christmas in Dixie to Santa Claus (I Still Believe In You).
Now it’s clear that Thistlehair is about the cheesiest song ever possible, but it was always our favorite, I guess because kids like bears. There’s even kids singing on the track (wait until you get to minute about 3:15, it’s pretty much awesome).

Do we live in ‘Dixie’? I doubt it. I’m pretty sure ‘Dixie’ refers to Tennessee (although then why would a band called Alabama sing about it…? Come to think of it, there’s also a song on the album called Tender Tennessee Christmas. That’s just confusing.). But we loved this album, and now it’s a part of all of us. It wouldn’t be Christmas morning without Mom putting on these time-honored tunes and Ty and me singing them out-of-key to try to get on Carly’s nerves. (Hint: it always works).

So here I am, sitting at my desk in Korea, scourging Youtube for videos of Alabama singing Christmas tunes. It’s not quite the same, but it does bring me a little reminder of home and of my wonderful family… dorky though we may be.