This Christmas dialog comes from Brandi Hart and Buddy Woodward of The Dixie Bee-Liners. ‘Nuff said…

BUDDY: Enter Mike Wallace…dateline, Christmas season 2005. Location, the capital of country music, New York City. We had just put out our first CD only the month before, after much trial, toil, and tearing of hair.

BRANDI: We tore out each other’s hair…

BUDDY: And knitted it into a sweater. We weren’t sure how our music was going to be received, or how to procede… but we felt cautiously contented.

BRANDI: And relieved! That CD was over a year in the making.

BUDDY: So we were trying to figure out our next move, and then our beloved cat Nipper got really sick and died. I remember it was the first weekend in December — and the first snow of the year.

BRANDI: Nipper was the “Music City Kitty.” He was a brave little guy, and believe it or not, he loved country and bluegrass music.

BUDDY: He sure did. He was my pal for 15 years. He used to try to stick his head in the soundhole of my guitar when I was playing.

BRANDI: Did he ever go for the banjo?

BUDDY: Only to sharpen his claws.

BRANDI: Smart kitty! Anyway, losing Nipper was really tough on both of us, but Buddy took it especially hard. He bottles everything up…he’s the strong, silent type, don’t you know.

BUDDY: Strong like bull…

BRANDI: Dumb like chicken!

BUDDY: OUCH! Anyway, a week or so later, I started to feel feverish and had shooting pains in my side. When it didn’t go away — and in fact got worse — we went to a local clinic, where I was diagnosed with shingles. Shingles is caused by the chicken pox virus: basically, your nerve endings erupt in blisters.

BRANDI: That was all kinds of fun, right Buddy?

BUDDY: The fun was only beginning. I still had a couple weeks of rolling around in bed, clutching my side in agony, to look forward to.

BRANDI: Keep in mind, we were starving artists.

BUDDY: No health insurance.

BRANDI: Don’t you know.

BUDDY: After the vet bills, the doctor bills, the pharmacy bills….

BRANDI: Not to mention CD manufacturing and production costs….

BUDDY: Well, let’s just say we weren’t exactly decorating the Christmas tree with dollar bills.

BRANDI: No, we weren’t. In fact, we didn’t even have a Christmas tree.

BUDDY: Remember what we did?

BRANDI: Yeah, we got a wreath from the mini market and hung it on one of our mic stands, using 1/4 jacks for ornaments.

BUDDY: And an old bedsheet for a tree skirt.

BRANDI: Kind of cool and kind of pathetic at the same time.

BUDDY: As Nigel Tufnel says, “there’s a thin line between ‘clever’ and ’stupid’.”

BRANDI: So anyway, we get Buddy home and back in bed, a bottle of Percodan clutched in his feverish paw…and the first thing our other cat, Fang, does is jump right up on Buddy and start kneading on his skin.

BUDDY: Like the Dr. Seuss book, “Hop On Pop.”

BRANDI: OUCH. I think you hit high C.

BUDDY: I was definitely in the Bobby Osborne range.

BRANDI: In his own cat way, I think Fang was trying to help.

BUDDY: So, like, is there a point to this story?

BRANDI: Well yeah, it was our last Christmas in New York — right before all kinds of wonderful and exciting things started to happen to us as a result of putting out that first CD….

BUDDY: So this is sort of a “mighty oaks from small acorns grow” kind of a story?

BRANDI: Hmm, too trite.

BUDDY: “The darkest hour is just before dawn”?

BRANDI: How about “Shingle Bells”?

BUDDY: OUCH!

Banjo picker Bill Evans, author of the popular Banjo For Dummies book, recalls his Christmas of the banjo…

It was Christmas 1970 and, even though my eight track tape player was constantly playing George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass and John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band that holiday season, I had somehow decided that I wanted a banjo. Seeing Roy Clark on Hee Haw had put it in my fourteen-year old mind that I could actually play this instrument. I’m not sure if I had even heard bluegrass music at that point, growing up in Norfolk, Virginia.

There was a music store at Ward’s Corner, about a mile away from our house, and an Aria banjo had been placed front and center in the store’s Christmas window arrangement since early November. Priced at over $200, this was way too much of an extravagance for my mother, who supported the two of us on a meager Social Security disability income. She almost never called upon my dad to help out with anything extra — just getting the monthly child support was miracle enough — but somehow an agreement had been worked out to buy that banjo.

We brought the banjo home two weeks before Christmas and it was stored underneath the spare bed in my mother’s bedroom with the promise that I would not open the case until Christmas morning. Well, you know how that worked out. As soon as Mother had left the house on an errand, I pulled the case from underneath the bed and opened it up to take a look.

You can imagine my shock when I found a banjo with a broken resonator. The back of the instrument was a landscape of cracked wood with the resonator’s binding splayed out from the sides at various angles that obviously were not intended by the banjo’s Japanese manufacturer. My heart sank. Did this happen in transport from the music store? Had I done this myself in carrying it into the house? I had held the banjo in my own hands before we bought it and it was fine. Was this some kind of Christmas curse — God’s retribution to me for opening the case before Christmas? Could I not get away with anything?

I then remembered that there were two banjo cases in the back room of the music store. Perhaps, just perhaps, the store owner had switched banjos and had given us the one with broken resonator. I immediately felt guilty even thinking this thought but then another much larger issue loomed in front of me, like a ghost of Christmas present: how could I tell my mother about this? If I confided that I had discovered that the banjo was broken, I would also be admitting that I broke my promise not to look inside the case before Christmas. This was a tough existentialist dilemma for a fourteen-year old suburban teenager.

Full disclosure won out, along with the overriding desire to get a banjo with a good-looking resonator. My mom’s anger mingled with my own somewhat twisted Christmas joy as I watched her chew out the store owner, who promptly traded banjos with apology. When the new new banjo arrived home, it went under the bed once again and was not to be opened before Christmas morning.

This time, I kept my promise.

Mandolin prodigy Sierra Hull shares her fondest Christmas memory.

I can’t believe how quickly Christmas seems to come and go each year, and of course, each year always brings along some sort of new memory for me. One, however, that I’m kinda fond of, is the Christmas that I first got an instrument. My family has always been into music ever since I can think of. I remember singing along with Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver gospel tapes in the car ever since I could talk. My dad always played guitar for my brother Cody and I when we would sing in church, and my mom also sang. When my dad began learning to play the mandolin I really began to get interested in wanting to play an instrument too.

So… when my Granny Delk found out that I wanted to learn to play the fiddle, that’s what she and a few of my other family members chipped in together to buy me for Christmas. The fiddle they ended up getting, unfortunately, at that time was a full sized, and I was a small eight year old. I started learning to play the mandolin because of that - thinking it would help when I finally got a smaller fiddle, but I kinda stuck to mandolin after that. haha

That Christmas is a sweet thought to me because it reminds me of when I first started to play music, and it’s been such a special part of my life ever since. This time of year always makes me so thankful to God for everything he’s done for me, and to celebrate his birth is something we should all be excited to do.

I hope everyone out there has a very Merry Christmas filled with lots of love and cheer, and may God Bless you all!

Here are two more Christmas memories from The Grascals. First up is fiddler Jimmy Mattingly.

One of my fondest memories at Christmas as a teenager was waking up and spending the morning with my family, and then calling my best buddy to see what he got for Christmas. We would usually get together later and pick some music or hunt, and we would pretend we were recording records and crazy stuff like that.

Well, this year at Christmas I am recording my third CD on Rounder Records with The Grascals and that buddy, Danny Roberts. How cool is that!

Next, we hear from mandolinist, Danny Roberts.

A Christmas memory that stands out in my mind was the tradition of going to my Grandma’s house on Christmas day after Santa Claus had come to my house. As soon as you walked in the door you would smell the great food she would have cooking: ham, mashed potatoes, corn, green beans, chocolate pie - just so many great country dishes I can’t name them all.

Papaw would be outside gathering wood or messing around with something in the barn and I really loved to be with him out on the farm. After we had eaten what was to me the best meal in the world, the excitement would build while we waited for Mom and Grandma to finish up the dishes and then we all would all get to open our presents. What a great time and what a mess!!

After everything was opened it looked like a wrapping paper bomb had gone off, and then Dad and Papaw would gather all the paper and boxes up and I would get to go out back of the house with them and burn all of it. I really loved doing that…stirring the fire with a tree limb… how could a kid ask for anything more fun that that?

Well, Grandma has gone on to Heaven now and things definitely are not the like the used to be. But now as I watch my 6 year old daughter, Jaelee, experience Christmas and see her excitement with everything that goes on, it helps me re-live my old memories as I see her making new ones. Now when she is grown she will be able to look back and enjoy her Christmas memories like I do. I really miss the times I had at Christmas as a kid but I will always have my memories and some times a memory is even better than what actually happened.

James Allen Shelton, guitarist with Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mountain Boys, shares memories of getting music for Christmas.

Somewhere I have a picture of me as a teenager at my grandparent’s house in the early ’70’s on Christmas Eve proudly holding up copies of two Bill Monroe albums that I had gotten for Christmas. I remember that the albums were Kentucky Mandolin and Bluegrass Instrumentals. I listened to those records a lot when I was growing up and learned to play some of the tunes.

My grandaddy on Mom’s side of the family was named Bordie Porter and he was the one who first taught me to play the guitar. He lived just long enough to see the release of the first record album that I ever played on by a local group called The Bluegrass Travelers. He died just before Christmas in 1976 and I remember that as being such a sad Christmas for us all.

Then there was the time my wife totally surprised me by getting me the first two Bear Family Flatt & Scruggs boxed sets for Christmas. She put them in this huge box that a vacuum cleaner came in so I wouldn’t know what they were. I had no idea I was getting those and it was a wonderful surprise!

Here is a Christmas memory from master mandolinist Alan Bibey, who performs with Grasstowne.

I’ve been lucky enough to have a lot of great Christmas memories, but here are some of my earliest recollections.

Every Christmas as a kid was spent at my Grandparent’s. My Dad, my cousins and I would sit around jamming until time to eat, which ended up being hours if we got there early enough. I always pushed to get there as early as possible because we’d get previews of dinner while we played if we were real cool about it. Which I doubt I ever was BUT…

Occasionally Papa or Granny would come in and ask us to play a particular tune but mainly we were playing because it was just so much fun!

Christmas always brings back memories of why I play to start with, and reminds me of what a great time we had back then, as well as what a great family I’ve been blessed with.

This Christmas memory comes from Larry Stephenson.

In the early 60’s my dad bought me my first mandolin. It was a Gibson A-50, a little round bodied mandolin which I still have.

My dad and I played a lot of music around the Fredericksburg, Virginia area through the 60’s and into the 70’s. My mom and dad always told me if I ever learned how to play the Bill Monroe instrumental Rawhide they would buy me a Gibson F-5 model mandolin.

Well of course I worked hard to learn that song…everyday after school in front of that old record player. Well they kept their word and what a surprise it was. Christmas of 1974 with the help of our neighbor, they wrote little poems and wrapped them and had me running all over the neighborhood looking for clues and more wrapped boxes.

When I finally returned to our house there it was…a brand new Gibson F-5 mandolin. We always had great Christmases but that was one I’ll never forget. I’m sorry to say I don’t have that mandolin anymore, but I sure wish I did. What a great Christmas.

Let me also take this opportunity to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Thank you so much for allowing me to do what I love and that’s to play the best music in the world….Bluegrass Music.

Here are two Christmas memories from The Grascals, starting with banjo man, Aaron McDaris.

My Grandpa would always read the Christmas story out of the bible to us every year before we could open our presents and looking back on it, that was really a good tradition. Everyone would be sitting by the old pot belly stove and - because the living room was hardly big enough that you couldn’t be anywhere without being too close to the stove - we would have all the windows open because the heat would almost run us out of there!!

After he finished reading, he would pass around all of our presents so we could open them and my Grandmother would play the harmonica for us. Later on, when I discovered that I could play music, I would pick banjo with her and my Dad would play the guitar, and we would all sing and play Christmas music for the whole family.

Next, we hear from guitarist/vocalist, Jamie Johnson.

I will always cherish the twenty Christmases spent with my brother, Brad. He was the biggest Osborne Brothers and bluegrass fan ever and is the reason for my presence in the bluegrass world today.

He left this world in 1991 and I’d sure love to have another Christmas day with him! So please, take time to look around you and all of your loved ones this Christmas and be grateful for them, and tell them that you love them and cherish them.

Our thanks to Ron Block for this powerful and concise re-statement of the principle of “God made man.”

We’ve heard it hundreds of times - the Bible story of the Redeemer’s birth. The Baby in a manger, Silent Night, the angels and the shepherds, the wise men following the star. As a boy I grew up knowing Jesus came to save me from the consequences due my sins, that He came to shed His blood for me so that I could go to heaven. I didn’t learn until 30 that this was only half the reason.

In the Messiah’s birth, God the Son encamped in a tent of human flesh and entered our human situation. He set aside his power and took on the feebleness of an infant; He laid down His infinite knowledge and accepted the absorbent, blank consciousness of a baby; He gave up being everywhere and localized himself in a human body.

Adam and Eve had taken the wrong road; instead of eating of the Tree of Life, which is Christ, they ate of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil and so became infected with “..the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience.” (Eph 2:2). This spirit of independence, of self-effort, self-actualization and self-improvement, is at the heart of the world system; performance-based acceptance is the fuel the Matrix runs on. Every world religion is steeped in it, and even many Christian churches are tainted with what Jesus called “the leaven of the Pharisees.”

But there’s a major problem with human effort - it doesn’t work. The end result of it is either self-condemnation or self-righteousness, both springing from the same source - false independence from God. The history of humanity is one of fallen dreams, dashed hopes, unreachable utopias.

The holy Baby was born to become what we are meant to be - a vessel, a cup, indwelt by the Wine of Spirit. He “learned obedience by the things which He suffered.” As our representative He came to take our place in life, and having done that He traded places with us in death as if He were the sinner. The angel told Joseph in Mt 1:21 “…you shall call His name JESUS; for He shall save his people from their sins.” Jesus came to save us from being a sin-kind-of-people - not merely saving us from the consequences due our lack of love, our selfishness, but from being people who don’t love God and neighbor.

The Baby of Bethlehem was born so I could become right with God - and not only right with Him, but indwelt, directed, and empowered by Him. That infinite inheritance is available in the here and now - if we have received Him, Christ is now our peace, our patience, our holiness, our love, our life. He is our all in all. But in order to access that inheritance, we have to let go of the mindset of self-effort, of self-improvement, of self-actualization. I don’t at all mean our actions shouldn’t be good actions - but what we must recognize is at the heart of our inner being as those who have accepted Him into our hearts, Christ lives, and we are complete in Him, holy, acceptable to God, and empowered to love God and love our neighbor.

He was born in a common stable filled with the dirt, manure, and junk of animality. God is still striking tents in the dirt and grit of human flesh; He is still entering the messy human situation. Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God, but through Him by grace we become His brothers and sisters; the Spirit of Jesus Christ washes, enters, indwells, directs, and empowers His people. Eze 36:27 says, “…I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.”

That’s why the holy Baby was born.

Brance and I would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas!

When we count our many blessings, please know that our regular readers, loyal advertisers and trusted correspondents are always among those we note. Thanks for your support of what we do.

I’m in Norfolk, VA with my family and Brance is in Kansas City, MO with his.

Wherever you may be this Christmas, we hope it is a joyous and memorable holiday for you and yours.

This Christmas memory comes from Missy Raines, bassist with Claire Lynch, and leader of her own group, Missy Raines & The New Hip.

It’s late, and Ben and I are making our way to my childhood home for a Christmas visit. As we drive north through the mountains, my mind wanders back to years past and the rich memories I have of this season. Next to summer time and bluegrass festivals, I think the time my mother loved the best was Christmas. By early November, it became her main focus, as soon as we put up the last lawn chair and winterized the camper, that is. She did her ‘spring cleaning’ then, (no time in the spring, there were festivals to attend!), and sometimes a major home improvement project took place, which usually included changing the color of the walls. To this day, the smell of paint makes me think of one thing only, December 25th.

Christmas was a special time because my parents made it special. And for my mother, it was a particularly special time. We had lots of traditions and rituals. Many of them, I learned later were unique to our family and I suspect they came out of her imagination. She had what I would call a ‘less than desirable’ childhood and she used to tell me that it was her goal in life to break that cycle and create a completely different environment with her children. She succeeded in that. She cast a spell of magic around most holidays and infected us all with a joy that has never dimmed.

There’s something to turning things around, to react to the negative with a positive, to making good out of bad. It’s powerful and empowering. I have felt it. I have also missed it, missed the opportunity, seen it go by like a fast train. But each time it’s presented I know I have a choice. If we could think about our actions not as quick moments; first here, then gone, but rather as long lasting ripples that radiate out and lap upon those around us then we would always choose wisely. We would choose to make something good of every situation.

It’s at this time of year that this seems so relevant to me. This is a time when like no other, our actions are under the microscope. This is the time of year when we’re supposed to see the good, no matter how hard it may be to find. We sing about it, we pray about it, we decorate about it, with the words, PEACE and JOY and LOVE all around us. For a few short weeks a year, it’s as if the world is a photograph where (pardon this) the negative is reversed. The images are the same as before but we see them differently. We react with love, with kindness, and with tolerance. We turn the other cheek, sit on our tempers, count our blessings and turn things around.

This is the beauty of the season and though it’s cliché, wouldn’t it be lovely if it were like this all year?

My mother taught me many important things, but perhaps the most important thing was something I learned through example. I am the product of a ‘cycle broken.’ My siblings and I are the beginning of the end. We have a solid foundation of love and trust and happy memories to sustain us through our adult lives. It could have so easily been different for us but for a choice she made to change a negative into a positive.

My parents are gone but our family grows with grandchildren and great grandchildren, and I see the ripples flowing, and they are strong, healthy and long lasting. Thanks Mom and Dad.

Merry Christmas everyone.

This Christmas wish comes from Debbie Mills, whose husband Allen is the patriarch of The Lost & Found. Her post was inspired by one we published several months ago - one of our most popular posts - about their 4 year old grandson, Zacrye, who made his debut with the band at the Floyd Country Store.

Since Zacrye’s ‘concert’ with Lost & Found in Floyd, he has been asking for a banjo. We looked everywhere and could not find
a child sized version.

Allen went to see Darrell McCumbers, and he had a hand made banjo/mandolin combination, but he thought that would be confusing. I finally searched the internet one more time and found the perfect child banjo, and promptly ordered it. We will have to get it to him ahead of time, because if we wait until Christmas when my family gets together, all the other children will want to play it!

Zacrye saw Santa on November 29 and told him about wanting a banjo and a tool bench. About two days later, he asked his mom if he could write to Santa and tell him he would rather have a mandolin than a tool bench….oh well, grandma and grandpa will see he has one at least in time for his February 4th birthday!

My nephew, Jason Moore plays with Mountain Heart and his brother Darren plays with Jeremy Stephens and Cecil Hall at times. Darren has 3 year old twins that are crazy about the music too. Our family gets together on Christmas Eve and of course there is always music. My brothers and I both play, so with Allen, Jason, Darren and everyone singing….we just have a grand old time.

Of course, this will be our first Christmas without my Dad, who passed away in July, but one of his greatest legacies was passing along to us his love of Bluegrass music, and what better way to honor him than to carry on the tradition.

Happy holidays to all our friends and fans and we look forward to seeing you in 2008!

Deb & Allen Mills, Scottie Sparks, Ronald Smith and Scott Napier
The Lost & Found Band

This post is a contribution from Niall Toner, a popular bluegrass singer, songwriter and radio personality in Ireland. His reports from IBMA ‘07 will air on Ireland’s RTE Radio One on 12/26-27 at 1:00 p.m. (EST).

Season’s Greetings, and good wishes from Ireland.

A Christmas memory for the blog: Odd as it might seem, three or four of the most influential recordings in our house when we were youngsters, arrived around Christmas time on different years. Stranger still is the fact that after a half-Century, every Christmas day, these are the same records we still listen to!

They include LPs [you remember them!/vinyl] from the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams and Bill Monroe!

Even today, when young enthusiasts ask me for advice on getting to know the music, I can still recommend these four …….

This contribution comes from Casey Henry, a banjo player and writer living in Nashville, TN. She grew up in a bluegrass family with her parents (Red and Murphy Henry) performing as a band and running a bluegrass business (The Murphy Method), and her brother Chris playing mandolin.

Christmas Eve for my family has always been about playing music. There is a close-knit bluegrass community in Winchester, Virginia, where we moved in 1986. Every year since then we’ve attended two parties on the 24th, and the day wouldn’t seem right without them.

Dalton Brill is a local barber, banjo player, and, as one newspaper article put it, if the bluegrass scene was the Mafia, he’d be the Godfather. His barber shop brims over with food, music, and eggnog as everyone he knows drops in, musicians and non-musicians alike.

There are people there I only see once a year, people who used to come every Wednesday to watch us play downstairs in the basement of that shop. And every year there are people we miss, who have moved on from this life to whatever lies ahead. We always pick a tune and have a drink for them.

After Dalton’s we move the party to David McLaughlin’s house where his wife Gay arranges a beautiful spread of seasonal goodies, on which we stuff ourselves before migrating to the other room to play some more music. David sometimes plays, sometimes doesn’t. Usually he’ll play guitar or bass. Sometimes he’ll flatpick the banjo or play snare. One year Tom Gray came, and that was great fun.

When Bob Amos (of Front Range) lived in town he’d always stop by before going to the Christmas Eve service. We cherish the chance to all be together at the holidays, (Except for the year his kids gave us the stomach flu. I really wish he’d cancelled that year.) and we miss Lynn Morris and Marshall Wilborn, who are always in Texas with their families.

As we drive back to our house full of Christmas cheer, through the luminary-lined streets of David’s neighborhood, we think of Santa making his rounds and hope that he won’t forget to stop at our house.

The following Christmas memory comes courtesy of Katy Daley, popular host on WAMU FM in Washington, DC for many years, and now a regular on BluegrassCountry.org.

In 1990 I produced a radio documentary on Arlington National Cemetery and met several of the guards at the Tomb of the Unknowns. When Christmas rolled around my husband, Bill, and I thought it would be nice to ask if any of those young soldiers might like to have a home cooked meal with our family on Christmas Eve. It turned out to be one of our most memorable family gatherings ever.

The house was packed with three young children, two sets of aunts and uncles, some grandparents and a couple of neighbors when the two young men arrived. We had all the usual Christmas trappings — the tree and other decorations, the platters of pre-dinner snacks and holiday CDs playing softly in the background. I see now that some of our Christmas traditions had become so routine they were Ho-Hum instead of Ho! Ho! Ho!

After a huge meal we were all jockeying for the most comfortable chairs when one of our Christmas guests told us he had to leave soon to perform some holiday music at his church. He said he a few minutes to play some carols for us, and suggested that if he brought his trombone in from the car maybe Bill could accompany him on the piano.

So he brought in the trombone and Bill got out the sheet music.  They ran through a few tunes and just like any impromptu jam session, there were a few “ouch” notes that had us laughing. Then he asked us all to gather around the piano and sing. We sang and laughed and called out requests for about 20 minutes before it was time for our horn section to head off to church.

We still smile when we recall the gift of music that young man — Jason Wiseman — gave this family. And we always refer to that night as “The Christmas Eve a WiseMan Came for Dinner.”

Here is a charming look at Christmas from Curkly Seckler, tenor singer and manolinist with Flatt & Scruggs in their hey day. Curley also wrote several of their most memorable songs, like No Mother Or Dad and That Old Book of Mine.

Curly and his five brothers and two sisters grew up on a 150 acre farm near China Grove, North Carolina. Their dad passed away in 1929, when Curly was only 9 years old, but they still managed to have a special family celebration at the holidays each year. Christmas Day had special significance for Curly, since it was also his birthday!

Back when I was growing up, all of us had to hang up a sock, you know. Us kids, there was eight of us, used to hang them on the mantle. You’d hang up a big sock, and then they’d fill it up, over half way, with just parched peanuts, in the bottom of it. Then they’d put an apple or an orange or a tangerine in there, and then on the top of it you’d have a little knife or something like that, and that was it, back in them days.

I remember one year my mom give me a knife, and I kept that thing up until me and Eloise got married (in 1998), and through that move I lost that knife somewhere. I don’t know where it got to, but I lost it. And my mom only give, I think, about twenty-five cents for it. Back then you could get a pretty good knife for a quarter. I was about nine years old, probably, when I got that knife. I remember that real well.

I’ll tell you something else they did one time. They give us some little old stopper guns, you know, with a cork in the end of it. Little old pop guns. Us kids got them things, and you’d hammer it back, and then shoot it, and it’d go, “Poop.”

We’d always go out and cut a tree down and put it in the house, for Christmas. And we’d decorate that Christmas tree. We strung popcorn on it. But it seems like it was some kind of soap suds that we used to put on the tree, to make it look kind of snowy looking. Seems like we used to cut out some ducks and stuff and paste them on there. Little old things, out of a Sears and Roebuck catalog, and paste it on the tree. We had some good times together, all us kids.

And I’ll tell you something else we used to do along about Christmas time. (more…)

This inspriring story was written by the Rev. Belle Mickelson. She is an Episcopal minister who runs Dancing with the Spirit, an organization which teaches bluegrass to youngsters in the native villages of Alaska and Canada - and which could use the support of the wider bluegrass community.

Yesterday was the big Christmas Concert and dinner at Arctic Village School. Kids played fiddles, guitars, mandolins, and banjos and sang Jingle Bells, Silent Night, The First Noel, I Saw the Light, and You Are My Sunshine. Outside, it was 40 below and the moon shone on the snow-covered ground.

Elders Gideon James, the Rev. Trimble Gilbert plus Wilbert Kendi helped my son Mike and I teach music all week. They are from the Athabaskan Indian fiddling tradition of rhythmic foot stomping and dancing. The kids loved it and many stayed after school to play just one more tune!

Arctic Village is the fourth stop in our Christmas tour that began Dec. 1 in Beaver and then continued on to Stevens Village and Tanana—little places along the Yukon River. We flew by small plane—all bundled up just in case we had to make an emergency landing. We usually camped out in schools—that sometimes had the only running water in the village.

The kids were so excited to see us come! It was so great to see their smiles as they picked up guitars or a banjo… I loved what one little 7 year-old girl in Beaver told me as I played the fiddle for her. “It talks,” she said, “it talks!” And the kids in Stevens giggled and laughed so much as they tried square dancing by themselves. In Tanana, Pete Peters traveled with us and brought Native drumming and language for a couple songs.

I’m still amazed at how fast all the kids learn. We use color-coding and simple notation. It was our third week-long visit to Arctic Village this year—and junior high and high school fiddle students can easily play over twenty songs including Amazing Grace, I’ll Fly Away, Liza Jane, Will the Circle be Unbroken, and The best part is the joy they feel—and the sense of accomplishment. On the guitar, it only takes a few days to learn the chords and start flatpicking. The mandolin is great for little fingers because there are two finger chords. We don’t have a lot of banjos and acoustic basses—but hopefully that will happen soon!

This trip is funded by school districts and Dancing with the Spirit—a new bluegrass music program for kids in Native villages in Alaska and Canada. Thru camps and school programs, young people take classes in fiddle, guitar, banjo, mandolin, and bass—plus sing, dance, and form bands. Music can bring success and hope to villages struggling with alcoholism, drugs, and suicide.

The Rev. Trimble Gilbert from Arctic Village says, “In the old days we fought tribal wars with arrowheads. It’s a different type of war now—against drugs and alcohol. I believe we can win with music.” (more…)

This post comes as a contribution from Dixie Hall, one half of the songwriting powerhouse Tom T. and Dixie Hall, who manage both Good Homegrown Music and Blue Circle Records.

Several years ago, we were enjoying a visit to Bluebird Hill (our Clinch Mountain home in Hiltons, VA) and received news of a mysterious fire at the church. A candle had somehow self-ignited and smoldered for many hours creating much cleanup work of smoke damage.

As hard as I tried, I could not get Tom T.’s interest in this subject as a song idea until later that week when we received a phone call from Linda Lay & Stony Point requesting a Christmas song p.d.q.

Although a totally different story, the candle thought came through for us and we worked out Oh, Christmas Candle. Since then it has also been recorded by Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Sim Daley, builder of the acclaimed Daley Mandolins, and banjo picker with Cages Bend, shares this lovely remembrance of the Christmas season where he grew up in the south of England.

As some of you may know, in a former life I was a commercial fisherman in the small Cornish fishing village of Looe in the South West of England. I grew up in the village and as one of the predominant industries in the town, I naturally fell into the fishing trade. I worked on the boats pretty much from leaving school up to a few years before I moved to Nashville in 1995. I started off by crewing for other skippers & eventually worked my way up to owning and operating my own Trawler.

Christmas in Looe was always a special time of year for me. Not only did the fish market shut down for the Christmas holidays, around the 20th of December - which meant we could not go to sea until it re-opened again after Christmas - but the New Year’s Eve celebrations in Looe were reported to be the 3rd best in the whole of England!!

As I have said, it would all start off by the closing of the fishmarket. The next few days were spent mending fishing nets and give the boats a clean and scrub up. A good portion of our time spent ashore seemed to be spent in the cafe drinking mugs of steaming tea, eating big fried breakfasts and spinning yarns, or else in the pub for a pint at lunch time which usually developed into an all day session.

Christmas Eve was a tradition in itself. At lunch time everyone would descend on the Decker, one of the pubs in the town. They always had a local rock band called No Picnic playing live. Three or four hours later, and several pints of beer heavier, most people would stagger home to spend the evening lounging on the couch in front of the fire watching TV and eating Christmas goodies.

Christmas morning would start by unwrapping presents. Once this was accomplished, and a significant amount of chocolate consumed, I would sit and watch TV until the ordeal of Christmas dinner presented itself. To say the meal was big was always an understatement but somehow I managed to struggle through. As the inability to move subsided I would go for a walk down to the quay and if I was feeling really adventurous, an extended walk out to Hannafore Point. It was always nice to run into friends also walking their dinner off and spend time taking in the scenery and sharing good conversation. (more…)

This Christmas memory comes from Rhonda Vincent, who will be sharing some of her favorite Christmas music and memories on Sirius Bluegrass on Christmas Eve at noon and 9:00 p.m., and again on Christmas day at 3:00 p.m. (EST).

Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year. I think because it’s also my mother’s favorite holiday. She always made sure the house was decorated for Christmas; and that everyone had plenty of gifts under the tree.

We went to the Good Shepherd Church in Greentop, Missouri, every Sunday night. Several weeks before Christmas, every child was given a verse to read. I always got so nervous. I would worry if I could remember my verse, when it was my time to recite.

The program was a live interpretation of the birth of Jesus. Someone was chosen to be Mary, Joseph, the Wise men, 3 Kings, and Angels. Oh how I always wanted to be an angel! But only the teenagers were chosen as angels.

I was too small. And all the younger children would sing a group song and read their verse.

My family would also sing a special Christmas song. Family friend Phil Baker would always sing a song that spelled out the word C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S. That was my favorite, until the day I heard Beautiful Star of Bethlehem. I learned the song immediately; and that became my Christmas standard; that I was always asked to sing every Christmas after that.

And when I became a teenager, I was also lucky enough to be one of the angels. I was so proud to wear the white gown and the golden halo.

When my first daughter Sally was born on October 14, 1986, she joined the program as the baby Jesus in the manager, and my husband Herb and I were Joseph and Mary.

I spent many hours in our church. We lived one block from the church; and some of my fondest memories when I think about Christmas; are of the program, and how each family was given a bag filled with hard candy and fruit.

It’s a very special memory. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!