Mayor Harold Washington reads ‘Night Before Christmas’ (A Visit From St. Nicholas)

Here’s a rarity:

The time my colleague Michelle Damico got Chicago Mayor Harold Washington to recite Clement C. Moore’s classic poem, A Visit From St. Nicholas (more commonly known as “The Night Before Christmas”), for listeners to WXRT-FM 93.1.
Enjoy.


Bonus: Here I am reading the poem for Rivet Radio in 2015, with production by George Drake Jr.

And here are more of my favorite things about Christmas.

Explained: The appeal of Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’

A little more than two years ago in this space, I confessed an almost irrational appreciation for Mariah Carey and Walter Afanasieff’s now-classic song All I Want for Christmas Is You. And I wondered just what made it so darned appealing. I speculated that “it meets some abstract criteria for pleasing, energizing music composition” but asked: “Any music experts out there like to explain?”

For months, my curiosity went unabated. I challenged friends and listeners to suggest other songs that would hold up so well to repeated listening.

My family questioned my sanity and my friends questioned my taste. Until my wife discovered the answer in her Facebook feed.

At least one music expert’s risen to the challenge—even though he didn’t know I’d issued it.

Fellow veteran radio newsman Adam Ragusea, journalist in residence at Mercer University in Macon, Ga., and a self-described “recovering composer,” has posted just such an analysis to Slate: “Why Mariah Carey’s immortal holiday classic sounds so darn Christmassy.”

Go read it now.

Then listen to this interview Adam granted Rivet Radio.

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Addendum, Dec. 8, 2018: All hail the expert audio production of George Drake Jr.

How I foreshadowed ‘The War on Christmas’ in 1991

From a column I wrote for the Wednesday Journal of Oak Park and River Forest, Dec. 21, 1991:

John Fluevog Shoes storefront, 2012  (Photo: me)

When it comes to complaining about the media, about retailers and about starting the Christmas season too early, count me out.

During this season, I delight in the music. I love the lights. I cherish the general good cheer that rears its head as soon as the last Halloween pumpkin has been smashed in the street. As far as I’m concerned, the Christmas sales can start right after Memorial Day, but ...

One small aspect of the season drives me crazy.

As a kid who grew up celebrating Christmas at the home of one grandmother and Hanukkah at the home of the other, I may be alone on this one. But consider this:

It’s Dec. 25 and I’m at one of those stores open to sell batteries or ketchup or toilet paper or some other staple that Santa neglected to deliver. I pay, take my change and say, “Thank you.”

The sales clerk says, “Have a good holiday.”

I smile, respond “Merry Christmas,” and leave.

But the words gnaw at me: Have a good holiday.

It’s Dec. 25, for crying out loud. It’s Christmas.

Say “Christmas,” if that’s what you mean. If you mean Hanukkah (which this year came much earlier), say that.

This sort of lightly seasoned greeting seems even more inappropriate on the Fourth of July or Thanksgiving — secular holidays with no other context. Please: Say “Have a good Thanksgiving!” Say “Have a good Fourth!”

To quote one of the fundamental rules of good communication: Be specific.

I understand that saying “holiday” is a way to avoid offending people who don’t observe Christmas. But, when no other holiday is on the menu, “Have a good holiday” is likely to prove just as offensive.

“Happy Holidays” is fine for greeting cards or ads aimed at a mass audience over an extended period of time.

But consider this an appeal for sincerity and specificity in personal holiday greetings.

If you’re going to wish people something, don’t serve up some mealy-mouthed platitude. Wish them what’s in your heart. And may they wish you what’s in their hearts on the holidays important to them.

Merry Christmas!

Daddy and the Santa Claus dilemma

I’d run the scenario through my mind hundreds of times. I was certain I’d be ready when the moment came.

But when the fateful question emerged, I panicked.

“Daddy, is Santa Claus real?”

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(Originally published in the Wednesday Journal of Oak Park and River Forest, Dec. 22, 1992.)

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I’d heard similar questions before and parried them with ease:

“Do you believe in Santa, Daddy?” he’d asked.

“Do you?” I’d replied. He’d say yes, and that had been that.

But where the Socratic method was enough to sidetrack him a few weeks ago, it didn’t seem to work with a question fired point-blank.

“Is Santa Claus real?” The only retort that bubbled to the surface of my feverish brain was the totally inadequate “Are you?”

I mumbled something like “I’ve seen a lot of people I thought were Santa Claus.” But that was a dead-end, so I excused myself and scurried downstairs to consult the family’s real expert on Santa: Mommy.

“Ask him if he believes,” she said.

“Too late in the conversation for that,” I said.

“Tell him you’ve never seen Santa personally,” she recommended.

“No good,” I said. “That’ll leave him wondering who he’s been visiting all these years.” Besides: his younger brother was in the room with him.

“Then lie,” she said.

But I’m a terrible liar. And I wasn’t ready to sign off on the end of innocence for our firstborn.

So I returned to the bedroom with a book from my childhood.

“Almost a hundred years ago,” I explained, “a little girl asked the same question in a letter to the editor of a New York newspaper. Brush your teeth and get into your jammies, and I’ll read you her letter and one of the best answers ever written to the question you asked me.”

The brushing and dressing went remarkably quickly, and soon we were all jammed into bed.

And I read the words eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon wrote to the New York Sun in 1897:

Some of my friends say there is no Santa Claus.... Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

And I read the inspired answer from the paper’s editor, Charles Dana:

Your little friends...have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age.

The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. ...

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist. ...

He lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Dana may have been right. Maybe he was wrong.

But the important thing is that, by the time I was done reading his answer, the kids had forgotten the question.

So Santa makes glad the heart of childhood in this home ... for at least one Christmas more.

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Read more of what I’ve had to say about Christmas over the years.

E-mail Charlie Meyerson.

Christmas Song Challenge: Which of your favorites can pass the test?

[Note: Read an update to this essay with an explanation of the Carey song’s appeal here.]

On Facebook yesterday, I posted a confession that drew dozens of responses: The revelation that this is my favorite Christmas song: Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You.

And not just that I like it, but that it meets 100 percent of my personal needs for Christmas music. I can listen to it—and only it—repeating time after time, and not tire of it. Its chord changes remain energizing, its sentiment resonant, its rhythm scheme vibrant, even after I’ve listened to it for hours.

I’m not a Mariah Carey fan. I can’t offhand name another of her songs. But over the last few years, this song, written by Carey and Walter Afanasieff, has grown on me to the point where ...

OK, to the point where I listened to it today looping nonstop for 90 minutes. And could have gone longer if the phone hadn’t rung.

I can see where this song wouldn’t work for someone who’s lonely at Christmastime. But I suspect it meets some abstract criteria for pleasing, energizing music composition. (Any music experts out there like to explain? Comment below.)

The reaction from my friends and relatives included predictable disapproval. (Scott Kleinberg: “I just put in for more vacation time so I can mentally get over the news you just broke here.”)

But others offered their One Song choices. Before I ask yours, here are some of theirs:

Yo-Yo Ma and Alison Krause, The Wexford Carol: A perfectly lovely piece, but not enough variety or energy to justify an infinite loop.

Karen Carpenter’s Merry Christmas, Darling: OK, I guess. But her voice is flat, emotionally and tonally. And would you listen to it for 90 minutes straight? If you did, would you be willing to listen to it some more after that?

My wife needs Irma Thomas’ version of Oh, Holy Night at Christmas, but even she admits she couldn’t listen to it loop for 90 minutes. (In fairness, she says she knows of no song she could stand that much.) She says she could take any of Vince Guaraldi’s Christmas melodies nonstop—including Skating—and I agree. But instrumentals have an edge: By their nature, they’re unintrusive and don’t wear out their welcome so easily. So I’m going to limit the discussion to vocals.

Relient K’s Merry Christmas, Here’s to Many More is a great addition to the holiday playlist. (Thanks, Thom Martin.) But not enough variety for repetition and not enough energy to sustain listening for more than an hour.

John Denver’s Please, Daddy (Don’t Get Drunk on Christmas)? Nice sentiment, but I defy you to listen twice in a row, let alone for an hour and a half. Same thing with Jackson Brown’s The Rebel Jesus.

Of all the Facebook suggestions for vocals that hold up to repeated listening, the one that comes closest in my mind was suggested by Edie Folta: The Pogues’ Fairytale of New York. Like All I Want for Christmas, it starts out slow and a little off-key, but then builds to a bigger finish. (But the uplift is undercut by lyrics that include “scumbag” and “maggot” – bonus points in my world, but not for everyone, I’ll admit.)

All right, then. Now it’s your turn to take the Christmas song challenge: Which Christmas vocal can you listen to again and again for (oh, let’s say) 60 minutes straight without burning out? Take an hour while wrapping presents or shoveling or cleaning the house and then share below.

(The author is not responsible for any outbreaks of domestic discord that ensue.)

P.S. The Mariah Carey-Jimmy Fallon version of All I Want for Christmas with a little-kid chorus is delightful, but the lack of polish runs thin after repeated listening.

P.P.S. The Cheetah Girls version sucks.

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Let’s do the time warp again

On the morning after Christmas, for the first time in more than five years, I'll be returning to the airwaves on my former radio home, WXRT-FM 93.1 (93XRT).

I'll be filling in for the wonderfully dedicated and talented Mary Dixon at the morning-anchor seat I held for most of the 1980s, mostly alongside Terri Hemmert, who's still there; and before that with Garry Lee Wright, who's not.

But it's not exactly the same seat, and it's not in the same place. My last visit took me back to that cramped, windowless (but it was home!) place at 4949 W. Belmont Ave. in Chicago. This'll be something completely different: I'll be figgerin' out what's news from the 10th floor at 2 Prudential Plaza.

First newscast: 6 a.m. Last newscast: 8:30 a.m.

(Photo: Chicago Radio Spotlight)

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Christmases past, present, future

A lot of wonderful people I worked with at a job I quit 23 years ago get together every year at a big party that has in many ways defined the holidays for me and my family.

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First posted Dec. 16, 2012, to Daniel Honigman and Len Kendall's now-defunct project, "the3six5: 365 days, 365 points of view."

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In a tradition at these parties, each of the little kids gets a present. Years later, one of those gifts to our eldest son lingers in my mind above all others. It's a squeeze toy: a baby wearing a diaper and a baseball cap bearing the word "Ace."

Photo:
LauraTrev1 on Etsy

"Ace the Baseball Baby," as we came to call him, anchored the Meyerson bathtime toy lineup for years.

But those years passed quickly. The timeless nature of these get-togethers provides a stunning contrast to recognition that all three of our kids have grown up into young men.

And Ace has been relegated to a box in the basement.

This year, as the families of 20 children mourn their deaths in the senseless slaughter at Newtown, Conn., the passage of time weighs on me more heavily than ever.

That atrocity means the parents of 20 children won't get to introduce them, all grown up, to old friends. Twenty children won't get to bring around girlfriends or boyfriends to meet their parents' former coworkers. Twenty children won't live to hear their parents talk nostalgically about their old childhood bath toys.

Somewhere in a dark corner of a dark box, Ace the Baseball Baby awaits the call up to rejoin the roster of playthings for the next generation.

I left tonight's party hoping that generation will be blessed by lives free of horrors like that which descended on Newtown.

I returned home to read President Obama's words, echoing something I've been saying -- to some skeptics on Facebook, pleading for -- over the last few days:

"We can't accept events like this as routine. Are we really prepared to say that we're powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?"

I'm not. May we all resolve to do something to see it never happens again.

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Charlie Meyerson’s delivered the news to Chicago for a long time – in print, on air, online.

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More of Meyerson on Christmas here.

Nate Silver and the Miracle on 34th Street philosophy

[Corrected, Dec. 25, 2025, to reflect which mom was shopping for what.]

In the movie Miracle on 34th Street, Santa Claus, working at Macy’s, gets into trouble when he dares to tell a mother shopping for skates a toy fire engine that she’ll find a better pair at the competition, Gimbels:

“The only important thing is to make the children happy. Whether Macy or somebody else sells the toy doesn’t make any difference.”

That puts Santa in hot water with his bosses, but it ultimately proves smart, because customers like this one wind up loving Macy’s all the more.

“Imagine a big outfit like Macy’s putting the spirit of Christmas ahead of the commercial. It’s wonderful. … I never done much shopping here before, but from now on, I’m going to be a regular Macy customer.”

That approach makes sense for journalism: If someone else has a great story, don’t deprive your audience just because you don’t have it. Credit the competition and share it, and your readers, listeners and viewers will love you all the more for bringing them the best of the best.

In the online world, this approach is known as “aggregation,” and I championed it in the Chicago Tribune’s daily email newsletter Daywatch. One reader got the concept almost right in 2008 even though we hadn’t expressed it publicly.

“I love the fact that you refer to other publications ... very classy ... reminds me of Miracle on 42nd Street!”

In the world of polling, University of Chicago graduate Nate Silver is high priest of the Miracle on 34th Street philosophy. As a polling-biz outsider looking in, he’s been able on his FiveThirtyEight blog to see beyond the silos of any one outfit, creating a mathematical mix of statistics that give the public “the best of the best” (in this case, statistically adjusted aggregations of all polling information) regardless of where it was built and its creators’ biases.
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“We think our perspective is the only one out there,” Silver told Boston’s Phoenix before the election. “That perspective is often wrong.”

Silver’s agnostic approach at times drew even more criticism than Santa’s. But ultimately his wisdom’s proven correct, as his predictions skated into reality.

Many organizations still haven’t recognized that the “Miracle” approach is a key to driving customer loyalty. That’s true for online content; ask Matt Drudge or Arianna Huffington. And Silver’s proven it clearly by becoming The New York Times’ biggest brand; The New Republic says one in five visitors to the Times‘ Web site visited his blog in the run-up to the election.

The “Miracle” approach is at the core of the success and loyalty engendered by Amazon.com. (Consider the “Available from these sellers” link, and its now widely imitated forum for customers to condemn products publicly.)

Now that every organization’s Web site is—or should be—in the content business, it’s a philosophy every organization should embrace: The way to own your area of expertise is to aggregate the best of the best information about it. Send ’em to Gimbels and they’ll love you—and your Web site, and your organization—all the more.

Ask Nate Silver.

* Perception problem with the “popular vote” map Fox News has been showing:
— Percentage of U.S. geography colored red but unoccupied by actual human beings: Huge.
— Percentage of U.S. geography colored blue but unoccupied by actual human beings: Nowhere near as huge.
Here’s a better take from the Tribune.

* Good to see the Tribune launch a new “countdown calendar,” this one ticking off days to the “fiscal cliff.” Guess who suggested the paper’s first countdown calendar?

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This post has been modified after its original publication; the quote from Nate Silver’s interview with The Phoenix was added Sunday, Nov. 11.