A Christmas Yuleblog

Here's another forgotten vinyl Christmas album, rescued from the Goodwill bin of obscurity by Pastor McPurvis and the good folks at Vinyl Orphanage . To quote Pastor McPurvis: "Up today are the happy holiday sounds of Roy Meyer and his group of Singing Swingers. Hailing from the great state of New Jersey, Mr. Meyer founded this community group as a non-profit agency dedicated to providing music scholarshops to high school students, as well as promoting vocal group singing throughout the New York Metro area. "Mr. Meyer penned some ambitious arrangements for the group, and though the singers may falter a bit on the more complicated harmonies, they more than make up for it with their enthusiasm and sincere delivery." Pastor McPurvis hits the nail on the head... At first glance, this album looks like a church group recording but the arrangements more than make up for it. It seems Roy Meyer is alive and well and still swinging in New Jersey. And if you got voca...

Here's a new subgenre of Christmas music that I've added to my collection - Christmas carillon music. Last December, I've began searching my local Goodwill, Salvation Army, antique stores, vinyl resale shops, and garage sales for unique Christmas music that I can digitally transfer over. I found a RCA Victor "Living Stereo" album cover entitled "A Christmas Sound Spectacular" by John Klein at a local Goodwill (no record enclosed unfortunately) that piqued my interest. Thankfully, I found a site that sells this very CD and ordered up a copy. I then found this album over at Vinyl Orphanage last December when they shared a bunch of wonderful Christmas albums. Down in Lake Wales, Florida is the Bok Tower Gardens (now Bok Sanctuary) - a sprawling area of bliss established by noted American author Edward Bok and designed by the famous landscape artist Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr.. After the last garden was planted and watered, Bok sensed something was...

Every Christmas, there's one hot toy or game that is all the rage: XBox 360, Tickle Me Elmo, Nintendo, Teddy Ruxpin. People camp out for days ahead, trample over people to get their hands on their item, and pay top dollar to give someone a Merry Christmas. This entire phenomenon can be traced directly back to the Cabbage Patch Dolls. First created in 1976 by an art student named Xavier Roberts, the handmade dolls started off slowly and sold quite well. Roberts came up with the cutesy-wutesy idea of "adoption papers" and "official birth certificates" and people went "Awwww" to the tune of $60 million in the first year. By 1980, the demand had begin to build and dolls were reselling for 100 times over the original price. Toy companies were clamoring for the chance to mass reproduce the toys and Roberts eventually went with Coleco in 1982. The world was about to be flooded with Cabbage Patch dolls. Everyone remembers what happened next: the lines of peop...