While listening to Christmas carols the other day, thoughts of Christmases gone by came to my mind. I remember as a child my excitement every time the Christmas season drew near. My father would always decorate both the interior and the exterior of the house with festive multicolored lights and lanterns. My dad not only played Christmas carols all day long but even joined an all-male caroling group.
Through the years there haven‘t always been bright lights in my house during the Christmas season, especially the year Michael Murphy passed away. But the Christmas carols have always been there.
Christmas carols are ageless and, for a few days once a year, thread the past and the present in a seamless flood of warm memories. For a brief moment, Michael Murphy is alive hauling in a freshly cut fragrant tree inside our house during my first Christmas in Hawaii. I hear my dad practicing the second voice of “The First Noel.” I smell the faint whiff of vanilla and caramelizing sugar from the decadent, creamy ‘melts-in-your-mouth “Leche Flan” that my mom would always make for Christmas dinner.
As I was making a CD of Christmas carols for friends recently, I came across a Hawaiian version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” that I thought I’d include among my selections.
Here is the link: http://youtu.be/_gN9X0s6klE
- Ariel Murphy
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