Christmas Alphabet : H for Merle Haggard, Coleman Hawkins & Thomas Hardy

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There’s no denying that when times are hard (and someone near you right now is having those hard times) Christmas can be a season of worry rather than wonder.

Sometimes you pray that somehow you will make it through December.

When things aren’t going well the prospect of Christmas can make you shiver more than the coldest Winter winds.

When you’ve got a family to support you’ve somehow got to hang on until the warmer winds appear.

You’ve got to make it through December.

Make it through.

Trust Merle Haggard, the working stiff’s balladeer, to tell it straight.

Let’s change the mood with some more Vintage Jazz.

Don Redman leads an All Star band featuring the imperious Tenor Saxophone of Coleman Hawkins.

I think we can safely say that now we have found those warmer winds!

Throw another log on the fire!

Trumpets : Joe Wilder, Charlie Shavers and Al Mattaliano
Trombones : Sonny Russo, Jimmy Cleveland and Bobby Byrne
Saxophones : Don Redman George Dorsey, Milt Yaner, Al Cohn, Seldon Powell and Coleman Hawkins.
Piano : Hank Jones, Guitar : George Barnes, Bass : Al Hall Drums : Osie Johnson

New York, July 1957

Thomas Hardy as Poet and Novelist proved himself to be a fearless, wintery, anatomist of the human heart.

So, his Poem, ‘The Oxen’ has for me a special poignancy in the heart wrenching desire to believe that there yet may be miracles in the gloom.

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.
*
We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.
*
So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come; see the oxen kneel,
*
“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.
*

Here’s a gorgeous setting by Jonathan Rathbone sung by The Swingle Singers from their 1994 CD, ‘The Story of Christmas’.

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Set your Calendar now for December 9th and the next Christmas Alphabet Post R for …

 

45 thoughts on “Christmas Alphabet : H for Merle Haggard, Coleman Hawkins & Thomas Hardy”

  1. IJ is the best selection box around, Thom – The Oxen is such an accomplished poem, seeming so simple until you try to replicate its pathos, longing and spirituality. I enjoyed the music but ‘If we make it through December’ certainly rings a certain Christmas bell!

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  2. does your Christmas Alphabet serve up any of the Southern hemisphere where the season is summery…however, i do realise that a vast majority of my hemisphere was settled by colonials who bought their traditional seasons our lands. I’m in New Zealand in the northern half of the North Island

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