How to musically celebrate Christmas without snow
It’s that time of year, music lovers. That time when we switch genres on our iPods from rock, jazz, country or (in my case) celtic to holiday.
It gets you in the mood even if you live in the climes that did not give us the timeless traditions of sleigh bells, fur suits and reindeer foisted on us by the likes of Thomas Nast. Even if you live in places like Las Vegas and St. Petersburg (Florida, that is) and must endure the Christmas season without snow.
At least in Las Vegas I can get my snow fix by driving 40 minutes to Mount Charleston.
Speaking of holiday music, I returned from the aforementioned St. Petersburg to Las Vegas, having completed a training seminar at the Poynter Institute on writing and the use of the Internet to further the fine traditions of the craft of journalism. Always looking for ways to improve the paper in print and online.
The maestro of the week-long affair was the peripatetic preacher of all things prose (Dare I say venerable?) Roy Peter Clark. I had meet Clark probably 25 years ago or so at a similar function, back when we both had less snow on the roof.
What I learned about Clark this week is that he has a variant of that old Irish ailment, alcoholic constipation, couldn’t pass a pub. Only Clark can’t pass a piano. He was constantly entertaining with sometimes pertinent musical interludes from jazz to ’60s rock on the piano in the classroom.
On the last day, someone, a shill no doubt, asked him about living in St. Petersburg and celebrating Christmas without snow.
Voila, up on the screen there arose such a clatter. It was a YouTube video featuring that little old piano player, so lively and quick, performing various versions of his ode to the tropical holiday season, “Christmas Without Snow.”
In the spirit of that classic admonition to writers everywhere to show not tell. Here it is:
