Holiday Music

Beginning the day after Thanksgiving, we begin to hear holdiay music on the radio, in stores, and in TV commercials. One of the all-time favorites that has been played to death since it first appeared in 1942 is White Christmas, written by Irving Berlin. The song is the lament of a Northerner stuck in California, who is complaining about spending Christmas under palm trees. When the song appeared in 1942, millions of Americans were fighting overseas. So in time it came to represent the longing for an old-fashioned Christmas in a world at peace. You can find many versions of this song and lots of other holiday music on cd at the Austin Public Library. In the catalog's search box, type "christmas music and cd", "carols and cd", "hanukkah and cd", or "kwanzaa and cd". Many branches have a copy of the Circle of Light: a Mult-Cultural Holiday Celebration, a cd recorded at the fire station in San Marcos in 2000, and which is sung in various languages.