They say Christmas is a season of miracles. It’s also one of memories. Every year the memories of previous celebrations return like birds back from migration. Where they go the rest of the year, who can say? But they always return.. Sometimes there’s a particular memory that comes for a visit, but usually it’s just the aggregation of memories. Two or three frames from different years meld together for a yuletide highlights reel that plays on the back wall of your skull like some old 16mm movie you found in your attic and showed on a screen made from a bed sheet. It’s clear enough to get the gist, but not so that you can make out all the details. Such is nostalgia; more feelings than details.
For me, there’s one Christmas memory that comes home to roost before the others. It’s triggered by the first Christmas song I hear each year. Unlike many of my seasonal memory movies, this one is crystal clear. I suppose that’s because of its uniqueness and lasting impact on my life.
The Christmas of 1980 was my first to celebrate in a radio studio. I had been hired mid-November to do midnight to 6 a.m. Friday and Saturday nights. I wasn’t good. Just good enough to be trusted to keep the station on the air. Automation systems did exist then, but they weren’t as good as the computer automation we have today.
Christmas rolled around and low-rung-on-the-corporate-ladder (me) was allowed to come out of the graveyard. Two reasons led to this, neither had anything to do with my talent, of which I had little. Gimme a break, I was only 17. Reason one: the regular folks wanted to be with their families. Reason two: we were playing a special Christmas show called “Tis the Season”. It was on 12 vinyl records. So no talking. Don’t even think of opening the mic. Just play the program and insert the commercials between segments, cue to the next track and repeat the process until someone comes to relieve you. I worked Christmas morning from 6 a.m. until 10 a.m. Being a Christmas music freak, getting paid to play it was a real gift.
The single lamp in the studio with the overhead lights off cast a warm light. The VU meters were backlit with the same warm glow. Watching the needles bounce to some of my favorite songs of the season is a memory that will never leave me.
That was just the first of many holiday celebrations spent in a radio studio playing that same program. We ran it for decades. While I didn’t have any speaking parts in that Christmas pageant, I did get to talk to listeners on the phone. Folks would call in just to wish the “radio guy” a Merry Christmas and maybe ask the time or temperature. There weren’t many calls, but enough to make those shifts special and show me that radio touches people the way it did–and still does–me. Eventually, the discs were showing wear and we were moving away from music on turntables. So one of our overnight guys (not me) transferred it to tape. Certainly made playback easier!
As the years went by, I would work different shifts. Sometimes Christmas Eve. Sometimes Christmas morning or later that day. I enjoyed those shifts as much as celebrating with my family. The longer I have worked at WDUN, the fewer Christmas days were spent on the air. New folks came along allowing Kate and I to make special Christmas memories with and for our family
Still, when the season arrives and I hear that first Christmas song, the first memory to migrate home and roost in my mind is that corny jingle from that long forgotten show and how this bumbling broadcast career got started.
Then I know, tis the season! Tis the season indeed.
