The Great Songs of Christmas from Goodyear Tires!

with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Steve & Edie and the New Christy Minstrels!

In the 1960s, our stereo had a stack of 10 or 12 holiday music LPs that played pretty much non-stop between Thanksgiving and New Years. There were Nat King Cole, Barbra Streisand, and Bing Crosby, each represented by their own full-length, two-sided stylings, and then there were the compilations, thanks to the great tire makers of our time – Goodyear and Firestone!

Tire makers, you say? I know, but, it turns out the holiday season is a big sales season for tires! And this was a very successful marketing gimmick, because nothing says you’re special to me and I care about you and praise the lord, like a new set of Assurance WeatherReady® 2s, am I right? Thus the Christmas albums! And a tone was set and a memory was born. 

I think you can find them all on Spotify now, and that’s nice, but there’s something irreplaceable about the mental picture of the stack of 10 or 12 LPs, teetering on that slender spindle, each politely waiting their turn. 

And if I combine that memory with Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer with Burl Ives as the snowman, the smell of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and snikerdoodles, (because who doesn’t love to say snickerdoodles?) and Santa’s Wingtips, sprayed gold and festooned with holly and sitting by the fireplace – it’s a long story but so worth it – well, If I combine all of these, then I’m ready for the holidays and joy has been established and I’m pretty much good to go...or, if keeping with our theme, maybe I should say, I’m on a roll.

So, my wish for everyone for the holidays this year, during this, our winter of discontent, is to sing out, in tune or no; embrace the schmaltz; watch a valid version of a Christma Carol (and not some crappy, Bill Murray or somebody else snarky modern take, because the original version is plenty snarky on its own and does it better...including the Mister Magoo version); eat Christmas cookies because they have no calories, I read that somewhere; and find or create your own version of Santa’s Wingtips, which are an actual thing and a story unto themselves, but as a euphemism, they represent a random, created piece of magic that means nothing to most people but to the few who know, well it brings a smile that carries you through the year.

“Christmas isn’t a season. It’s a feeling.”

– Edna Ferber