A billion Noels? This Minnesota Jew revels in Christmas songs

Upon reading "Enough with the Christmas songs" (Dec. 8), I got to thinking.

Like the "annoyed" author of that commentary, I'm Jewish. But this Jew loves Christmas music. Last night, when Christmas Eve and the beginning of Hanukkah met up for the first time since 1959, a local radio station that offers 24/7 caroling joyfully accompanied our family's gift-gifting, latke-eating, menorah-lighting festivities. Christmas songs sung by Burl, Nat, Andy, Petula, Elvis, Ol' Blue Eyes, Brenda, Bing, Bruce and even Bobby (Dylan/Zimmerman) were happily welcomed into our home — for the "billionth" time.

Here's why:

When I was a little guy, Principal Blunt scared the daylights out of me. In my mind, she was the doppelgänger of Dorothy's (Judy Garland's) green-skinned, red-tongued, ugly-black-shoe-wearing Wicked Witch of the West, both of whom starred in my recurring nightmares. Nevertheless, it turns out Principal Blunt is most responsible for my love of the music of Christmas.

More about Principal Blunt later.

As soon as Christmas decorations appeared in our classroom, our clan of second-graders obsessed on predicting the surprises our teacher Mrs. Feldman (yes, that's right — Mrs. Feldman) was dreaming up for that year's class Christmas party. (Yes, we called it the "Christmas party.")

That morning Darnell Worm and I bounded to school through deep snow way too early. As luck or destiny would have it, we came upon Mrs. Feldman unloading a slew of grocery bags from her pea (We called it "pee") green DeSoto. She must have enjoyed toying with our fixation on those packages and matter-of-factly asked us to schlep them into the classroom and then shooed us outside.

I was right.

From under her desk she presented the class "music box." Out of its depths came our favorite means of diversion from everything boring: rhythm sticks, maracas and kazoos! My preposterous-looking but obsessive resolve to "sit up straight" paid off, because she picked me to distribute the instruments (and hoard one of the coveted kazoos for myself).

The joy we had making music! Under Mrs. Feldman's direction, we pounded, shook, blew and sang "Deck the Halls," "Good King Wenceslas," "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" and, of course, "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." Mrs. Feldman also had one of the other Jewish kids teach the class how to sing "The Dreidel Song," too.

After the music-making, Mrs. Feldman served us red bug juice in tiny paper cups, candy canes, cupcakes and homemade butter cookies with red-and-green candy sprinkles and blue-and-white ones, too. She also prepared a colorful plate of treats "for Santa," which Darnell noted was pretty dumb because it was the middle of the day.

Sometime during that sugary feast, we heard Principal Blunt's sinister shoes approaching. You could always hear her shoes echoing in the hallway, souring our stomachs with acidic fear. Which one of us would she snatch this time? When she appeared in the doorway in her usual uncompromising black dress, rimless eyeglasses and those god-awful pitch-black shoes, we sat waiting in stone-cold silence.

Clueless about her mysterious coming and going, we assumed it was about our raucous celebrating. Too loud? Too wild? Too messy? With Principal Blunt, you erred on the side of caution, so it took little urging from Mrs. Feldman for us to scrub our desktops and pick up "every bit of trash from the floor around [our] desks."

Good timing, because soon after, once again came the ominous staccato rat-a-tat-tats of "Youknowwho's" shoes on the shellacked wooden hallway floor.

A day that had begun with such promise would not end well. Or so we thought.

What happened, suddenly and unexpectedly, was the appearance of Santa — herself — adorned in a makeshift blazing red felt coat and hat, fluffy-white (cotton ball) beard and black boots. Well, not exactly boots. They were those sinister black shoes, but this time colorized with huge — really huge — red crepe-paper bows.

We sang a few more Christmas songs with the disguised Principal Blunt (which seemed extraordinary to me). Mrs. Feldman gave her the plate of cookies, and the party was over.

Since then, on Christmas Eve and Hanukkah, we've cherished Nat's exquisite "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)," Brenda's "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" and Bing's "I'll Be Home for Christmas" a "billion" perfect times — all of them a joyful accompaniment to the dreidels, latkes, gelt and a story about how a long time ago we sang a cappella with Santa, aka Principal Blunt. They grace our home with good cheer, comforting melodies, and, maybe most important of all, a brief respite from a lot of, well, unpleasant things.

As the song says: "For we need a little Christmas/ Right this very minute … ."