What Sweeter Music
December 2025 Newsletter
This whole post is going to be Off Topic
Now that we’re past Thanksgiving, I am full throttle, pedal to the metal, ready for Christmas. And I suspect I’m not alone! In this newsletter I’ll share some of my favorite traditions and stories, and I hope you’ll share some of yours as well. I’d love to hear them!
The Food
I love Christmas food. Yes, an iced sugar cookie is delicious any time of year, but an iced sugar cookie, in the shape of a gingerbread man or snowflake, with red and green sprinkles? That is transcendant. I know the red and green M&Ms are the same as regular ones, but also…they aren’t. Same with Hershey kisses in red, silver, and green foil. Same with my all time favorite: Reese’s Bells. I actively avoid buying candy for most of the year, because it lasts approximately ten nanoseconds in my house, but at Christmastime I have to hold myself back from that seasonal candy aisle. Well done, Hershey marketing team! You win and I do not even care, just hand over the KitKats.
Every year I throw a Christmas tea party for the ladies in my family. It’s a wonderful way to spend time with some of the dearest women in my life. We drink tea and hot chocolate and eat dainty finger sandwiches. I spend way too much time trying to arrange the treats into an attractive, Pinterest worthy sprawl, only to give up and just toss it all on the table because I am not a food stylist. We play some sort of game, like trivia or Taboo, and generally catch up with each other’s lives. It’s lovely, and dare I say, elegant.
It’s also an excuse to bake an absolutely enormous number of cookies. Like, way, way too many cookies, because I can’t make myself narrow down the options. This year I’ve already gotten ahead of the game:
That’s a bag of chocolate chip cookie dough, molasses spice, and a couple of pecan sandie logs. (And yes, a bag of chicken nuggets stuffed in the ice maker bucket. It’s okay, the water line isn’t hooked up.) I also have oatmeal raisin dough in there somewhere. The only problem with this strategy is the fact that little balls of frozen cookie dough are delicious, so keeping everyone’s mitts out of the freezer, including my own, hasn’t been easy.
The Music
Who doesn’t love Christmas music? Yes, I can see how the more cheerful, earworm type songs can rub salt in wounds if you’re having a tough Christmas, which I think we have all experienced at some point (Where Are You, Christmas? is good for a cry, if you need that). So while I do love Last Christmas, and every time I hear Jingle Bell Rock I think to myself, “Everybody in the English-speaking world knows that song,” some of my very favorites are decidedly less upbeat at first glance. Or even if the tune is upbeat, the words themselves have deeper meaning. They’re more about Hope. Specifically, the hope that was fulfilled with the birth of Jesus, the Messiah:
O come, thou Dayspring, come and cheer/ our spirits by thy justice here;/ disperse the gloomy clouds of night,/ and death’s dark shadows put to flight. - O Come, O Come Emmanuel
No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground;/ he comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found. - Joy to the World
Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace! Hail the Sun of Righteousness!/ Light and life to all he brings, risen with healing in his wings./ Mild he lays his glory by, born that man no more may die,/ born to raise the Sons of Earth, born to give them second birth. - Hark! the Herald Angels Sing (my top favorite)
I also looooove Christmas choral music. Every year around this time I dig out my St. Olaf Choir Christmas in Norway CD, and the Veni, Veni Emmanuel CD from (I think?) the Emmanuel College choir at Cambridge. (Track 2 on that one is called What Sweeter Music if anyone was wondering about the title of this newsletter. Side note: I think that recording would make a lovely wedding processional, maybe for the mother/grandmothers.)
The George
Now to one of my very favorite Christmas stories, even though it has literally nothing to do with me or my family, as you shall soon see.
Like many people of my age, Christmas morning as a child meant parents hauling out the camcorder and setting it up to capture the joyful moments of opening presents together. The oohs and ahhs and cries of excitement when the new Barbie or Grand Champion (IYKYK) is revealed. But one of my very favorite Christmas morning moments caught on video wasn’t of my family at all, but Joy’s.
Joy was my best friend in high school. She lived in a neighborhood nearby, in the coolest split level house I’ve ever set foot in. Even now, two decades later, I find myself thinking of the awesome structure of that house, which somehow packed four levels into a house that appeared to have two storeys. To someone who grew up in a ranch with an unfinished basement, it was mind-boggling.
Joy’s family had a neighbor named George. George was elderly and often rode over to their house on his Rascal to say hello, which, without fail, turned into a very long conversation. He did this a lot. As an adult, it’s clear to me that George was lonely and craved companionship, and it is a testament to Joy’s family’s friendliness that he was comfortable coming around so often. But as anyone who’s lived in a neighborhood knows, sometimes you have time to chat, and sometimes you really, really don’t. Being able to pick up those signals and differentiate between the two times is a learned art, and a key part of the suburb social contract.
So, it’s Christmas morning of either junior or senior year, and Joy’s family is gathered around the Christmas tree in the lowest level of their cool house. They’re opening presents at a leisurely pace, mid-morning sunlight streaming gently through the window, when suddenly they hear a faint, disembodied “Helllooooo!” and the whir of a Rascal from the driveway right outside.
It’s George!!!!
All of them, without hesitation or exchanging a single word, HIT THE DECK. Diving to the carpet in perfect synchrony, waiting in agonized silence for the threat to pass, like someone had just thrown a grenade. (Yes, I know, elderly gentlemen just wants to share Christmas greetings, but see the aforementioned suburb social contract. I think most people would agree that unless an explicit invitation has been extended, Christmas morning is family time.) A moment passes, and then they all get up and ease back into their chairs with nervous smiles.
Fortunately, Joy’s family had set up a camcorder on a tripod, and were therefore able to unwittingly capture this amazing scene. When she showed it to me I laughed so hard I thought my lungs would explode, and I watched it over and over. The way they all make that unplanned dive to the floor is perfection, an outstanding example of the power of physical comedy. To this day it makes me laugh whenever I think about it. It’s one of my favorite Christmas morning memories, even though it isn’t mine.
(I should also add that George was fine. I’m sure he Rascaled over later in the day at a more socially acceptable time.)
Farewell, 2025
I hope all of you have an amazing Christmas with your family, and I look forward to finding out what 2026 has in store for us. It’s going to be great!
Happy reading,
Caroline
