A Season for Music

huffingtonpost.ca

Remember when the Christmas season started with the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and continued through the Rose Bowl game on New Year's Day. If you do, you qualify as a Senior!

Maybe it was the supply chain catching up as COVID seemed to recede, but this year at many stores around us Christmas displays and music started before Halloween. And, at Midnight tomorrow night as Christmas Day becomes December 26, all traces of Christmas will vanish from radio and TV, as if it never happened.

In a devotional booklet we have been using this Advent season, we were reminded in today's final reading that the Advent Season ends today, with the Christmas season actually beginning tomorrow and running in many traditions through the Feast of Epiphany, which falls on January 8 in 2023. Epiphany not only commemorates the visit of the Magi (the three kings bearing gifts for the Christ child) but ties into the tradition of the 12 days of Christmas, starting on Christmas Day.

So, while this post may seem tardy, it may be just in time for those of you who, like us, start the season later and enjoy it for another week or more after Christmas Day.

Here are some posts you may wish to revisit:

• HOLIDAY SEASON (Thanksgiving through New Year's)
• A Thanksgiving Like No Other (November 20, 2020) as the COVID-19 pandemic produced wide-spread shut-downs around the world, musical talent could not be stifled and the technology of "virtual choirs" came to the rescue. This post featured "virtual choirs and videos to help us be grateful during a most unusual year" Little did we know at that time (before vaccines became available in early 2021 that the impact of the pandemic would still be with us two years later.
• We Wish You . . . Virtually (December 11, 2020) the COVID-19 pandemic put an end to the flash mob performances that had been popular for several years, but the use of the Internet to link "virtual choirs" produced some equally beautiful results.
• Music in the Malls (December 21, 2018). For three years, I updated a list of flash mob Christmas performances, featuring the US Air Force Band, professional and amateur groups, all staging their "surprise" flash mobs in shopping malls, outdoors, and other public spaces. By 2019 the quality of new performances had diminished, so the list was not updated and then COVID wiped out any public performances for 2020 and 2021.

• MUSIC FOR OTHER SEASONS AND REASONS
• Ode to Joy (April 9, 2020) In the first of what has now grown to 27 "Perspectives on COVID-19" reports, I ended with links to show how the human spirit and creativity can arise to inspire, with links to two versions of "Ode to Joy," the fourth movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony: one a pre-pandemic performance in a public square in Spain, the other a virtual performance in the early days of COVID.
• A World of Blessing (July 16, 2018). The song "The Blessing" became a platform for international participation in the virtual-choir movement. In this post, I presented links to a number of well-known songs ("The Irish Blessing," "It is Well with My Soul," "The Lord Bless You and Keep You," and "Psalm 91") along with virtual performances of :The Blessing" from 25 countries around the world.

• LOOK FOR MORE ON YOUTUBE
• Christmas Flash Mobs 2022 . There are some new ones this year, but most links are for pre-COVID performances, the better ones linked in my Music in the Malls post.
• Christmas Virtual Choirs 2022 . This search produces not only virtual choirs but the return of in-person concerts for 2022. To focus on live performances, search on Christmas Concerts 2022.