As you may recall, I recently whined and complained about the fact that December was the month for both auditions and concerts. What I failed to mention at that time was the fact that it is also the month for extra things going on at church, as well as make-up voice lessons for students who […]
Category Archives: Christmas
A Phone Call to Santa
I know that writing letters to Santa is the tradition, but in this day and age, why can’t we call him instead? Probably because it would turn out something like this. Merry Christmas everyone!
What Your Favorite Holiday Songs are REALLY About
Last week I went in to my son’s preschool classroom to sing for them. Once they found out I was an opera singer it was all over. They wanted me to come in and do some opera for the three and four year old set. But I also wanted to sing with the kids, so they […]
Yeah, We Made Ten Giant Gingerbread Houses. What?
We had this brilliant idea. After last year’s successful Gingerbread House Decorating Party, we thought, “Hey, we’ve got this down now! We can be smooth and streamlined now! We will make the houses smaller and more sturdy! We will be organized ahead of time! We will have it together!” But like most brilliant ideas, it […]
Church Choir Throwdown
I wasn’t nervous until I walked into the building. It hadn’t seemed like that big of a deal, or perhaps I had only been trying to convince myself that this was going to be a low-key, low-pressure, informal gathering of choirs, but as soon as I opened the front door and heard the perfectly polished […]
The Year We Stole Our Christmas Tree
To be fair, we didn’t mean to steal our Christmas tree. It wasn’t like we went out with the intention of celebrating the joyous season of giving and love by committing acts of theft and villainy, but if you have ever tried to do anything with my mother, you know that things generally do not […]
Audition Season! Concert Season! Audition Season! Concert Season!
As if the lives and schedules of singers weren’t dysfunctional enough on their own, some sadist out there decided to make the months of November and December, and more specifically the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, both audition season and concert season. Why opera companies would want to hold all of their auditions during those […]
A “Christmas and Easter” Football Fan
Perhaps you have heard the term “Christmas and Easter Christians” before, or perhaps you haven’t. It is a term that we, the “regular” churchgoing members use to describe those people that we only see twice a year. They might be members of the church, or they might not, but they do not attend weekly services, […]
Christmas Hangover
Man, that was a lot of Christmas! There is only so much joy and frivolity that one can take, and I am wiped out! The 26th should be a national holiday as well: a day of recovery. See, New Year’s Day is nice, because everyone does their celebrating the night before, and then you get […]
The Christmas Story is Our Story
Today is Christmas Eve, and millions of us are preparing to celebrate that most wonderful of days, some of us having no idea why or what it is truly all about. Why is this story so popular, and why has it captivated us for all of these centuries? The truth is, the Christmas story may […]