Thanksgiving Carols

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! I hope you have a wonderful time, and are lucky enough to spend it with family and friends.

It's so easy to get caught up with the cooking, after-Thanksgiving shopping (woo-hoo!), and holiday chaos, and I just love that we can have this wonderful holiday to sit back and be thankful for everything we have. (Most of us have to sit back, due to all the food we shouldn't have gobbled but did!)

Also, I couldn't resist changing the music to something nice and Thanksgiving-festive. "What?" you might say? "That's 'Jingle Bells' I hear playing (if you don't hear it playing, clean out your ears with your handy-dandy, perfectly sized fingernail, and scroll to the bottom of the screen and it should load) - isn't that a Christmas song?"

Nope! "Jingle Bells" was originally written in 1857 by J. Pierpont, a Boston Minister, for his children's choir, and was first sung for his church's Sunday School Thanksgiving celebration. Isn't that funny? The song was so popular, that the children were asked to sing "Jingle Bells" again at Christmas, and it's been associated with that holiday ever since.

See, I know this, because, after Thanksgiving, I do a fun lesson with my music students about Christmas Carols. If you're interested in finding out more interesting facts about the carols we sing every December, you can click here.

(Actually, the real reason I decided to post about "Jingle Bells" is because our weather forecast is calling for the first snow-fall tonight, and I'm determined to keep my thankful spirits up. My mind is humming, "Must not be depressed about winter . . . . must not be depressed about winter . . . . must not think how I hate winter . . . . think of something positive . . . . at least I don't have to mow the yard anymore . . . of course, I don't mow the yard anyway, Handyman does that . . . must think positive . . . I'll think of something!)