I didn’t begin to listen to Christmas CD’s until daughter Lise went back to Denmark on December 7. I wanted to keep the airways cleared so that we could talk without shouting. I began rather slowly, starting one when I was pretty sure I’d be in the kitchen with it. The pile was not diminishing quickly, so I began putting a new one on as soon as the last one was finished. I wasn’t out of earshot often.

I finished listening to all of John’s CD’s a few days ago. All of the standard Christmas music had been in one storage tub in the garage. I’m sure some of the discs were mine originally, but I had another small tub of things that only I would listen to. There were a few for Winter Solstice, and John would not have listened to those. The others had Christmas music done by New Age performers. I used to play those at my desk at work. People would hear music only as they walked through to go to the kitchen or to go out of the office.

I rejected 6 discs before I started playing them. There were 127, with music ranging from Medieval times to the twentieth century. I’m playing the last few from my tub, 29 in all. This has certainly been the loudest Christmas I’ve ever had. I can’t think of any time I enjoyed music more.

About an hour ago I heard something begin to play and listened carefully. I thought I heard a tune that was not related to Christmas. It was “Mary had a little Lamb”. Before I could get critical, I wondered which Mary in the last 2,000 years it was referring to. Surely it wasn’t Mary, the mother of Jesus, but you never know. Maybe I’ve had enough Christmas music for this season. That is proper, since many churches celebrated Epiphany today instead of waiting until January 6.