Author Archives: Kelly Sedinger

One of these years I’ll make it to see a live performance of The Nutcracker. Until then, this can suffice: Don’t have time for the whole thing? Here’s the Suite that Tchaikovsky arranged. I played this every year in college, … Continue reading →

For some reason, this has been on my mind for a bit this year…and I’m not sure I’ve thought about it in years before that. It’s the first season Christmas episode of The Wonder Years. In this episode, young Kevin … Continue reading →

You don’t often hear straight performances of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” these days, do you? It seems that every take on that song has to introduce at least some sort of comedic element, like the Johnny Carson version I … Continue reading →

I kind of get the vibe of late that this song is not terribly well-liked, but to me it’s one of the most beautiful Christmas songs of the last thirty years or so. It’s only very tangentially about Christmas — … Continue reading →

Frank and Bing.

Oooooh! I used this a few years ago, but it was on a really really really dodgy copy, that someone posted to YouTube from a worn VHS tape. Now, the official Johnny Carson channel has posted a full, nice copy, … Continue reading →

I manage to find some of the weirdest Christmas shit every year by just searching for some random thing with the word “Christmas”. Here’s a case in point: Hamildolph!

Franz Liszt wrote a suite of fourteen piano pieces late in his life, some of which are based on Christmas carols, and which he collectively titled “The Christmas Tree Suite”. And here it is! Interestingly, this is not the kind … Continue reading →

This song has been performed by everybody, but never so well as when Judy Garland did it first.