… or almost Christmas. I feel like for many, Christmas has a lot of layers to it: there’s the family thing, the materialistic thing, the changing of the seasons and year thing. Some people go in to this psychotically-cheery gift-giving frenzy, others become uncharacteristically Scrooge-like assholes. You see people you wouldn’t normally see. A lot of people go home to their parents’ houses and they sleep in their old rooms or guest rooms or whatever. Those spaces are often full of old memories, good or bad or both. It’s a weird polarizing thing, Christmas, and I think a lot of people would agree that that there’s a lot of weird emotions floating around at this time.
I kind of feel the same way about the old Peanuts comics. They’re funny and they’re sad in a way. They’re steeped in this kind of nostalgia, whether you grew up watching them or not. It works on a very complex level.
So it makes sense that the two elements would kind of suit each other in away. Vince Guaraldi’s “A Charlie Brown Christmas” is a legitimately good album, Christmas and Peanuts aside. It’s got jazzy up songs and lilting down songs.
My favorite cut is “Christmastime is Here (Vocal),” a Christmas standard. It’s got this slow shuffling kind of swing, and the brushed drums remind me of snow falling for some reason, even though I grew up in L.A. and it doesn’t snow there. The vocal line is sung by a children’s chorus, and it’s kind of reverb-y and haunting. It goes really well with Guaraldi’s gentle plinking on the piano. It’s minimal yet full, a little glum but overall uplifting.
