12/07/2010

The seventh door - God rest ye merry, gentlemen


I have no idea what you would call this in English. We called it a "Musiktruhe", literally translated as "music chest" which is something different, I know.


It was a radio/TV/record player combination and I loved it. So so many memories are connected with it. Of course this chest had been there before me, in the late 50s, I think. When it had made its way into my room, the TV set didn't work anymore and a piece of the glass in the radio had been broken out. When we were searching for a new channel, the little pointer inside came out through the hole and we had to push it back while turning the dial.
We had a nice record collection as well ... oldies. I love oldies. We used to stand on the table and pretend to sing. Elvis, German hits of the 50s, Fats Domino, old fairy tale records (we didn't sing along with them), I loved them ... and one single we had was "God rest ye merry, gentlemen". Somehow I never bothered to learn the whole text and for whatever reason until now I always thought it was "God rest ye, merry gentlemen". Why? No idea. Maybe I just liked the thought of merry gentlemen ...

Ever since I was a child, I was drawn to Christmas carols. I'm one of those annoying people who starts whistling Jingle Bells in summer without noticing the weird looks all around.
I love the traditional songs, I love the pop songs (NOT "Last Christmas", though, ban that song off the radio, please!), I love the German ones, the English ones, I love "Santa Baby" sung by Eartha Kitt, I'm just hopeless!

One of my favorites will always be "God rest ye merry, gentlemen", though. In fact I'll listen to it now.

3 comments:

  1. I can hear it in my head now... *God rest ye merry, gentlemen Let nothing you dismay
    Remember, Christ, our Saviour Was born on Christmas day* I will fall asleep tonight with it, and hopefully awake to it as well. Thank you for bringing a little cheer to my evening. What a wonderful post.<3

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  2. Oh wow! Talk about flood of memories. My grandparents had one of those. I loved it and I miss them terribly. I've been thinking about my grandfather a lot over the past few weeks. Not sure why. Then I saw that photo come across my google reader and a flood of memories of him just rushed in. Things I had not thought of in years.
    I wish he were still alive.

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  3. Hugs to you, Star. I hope it was a good flood even if it made you miss him.

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