Tis the season to decorate the house and listen to holiday music. I don’t listen to this type of music often but when I do, I always find myself going back to the same album that I have listened to since I was young. Anne Murray’s Christmas album. She has the classics, my favorites, and holiday songs I haven’t heard anyone else ever sing. I grew up absolutely loving it.
I grew up listening to it with my family while decorating the house and tree. We would play it on cassette and I repeated it so many times that I could have told you for years what the last song was on each side of the tape (I’m a little rusty now). It was one of the only cassettes that I listened to for years and years.
Then the times changed and before you knew it, we started listening to the same songs on CD. This upgrade made listening to all our music much easier. I am a notorious song repeater. When I love a song, there are times when I want to hear it over and over. I could finally do this! I was enjoying this album the way I had wanted to for all those years.
Guess what happened next? Technology changed! I know- it’s a real shocker. I haven’t owned a CD player for years. I realized that this meant that I also did not listen to my Christmas album for years either. That was until this year.
I have been enjoying Spotify as my main music platform and it dawned on me when I wanted holiday music that I had most music at my fingertips. I looked it up and sure enough – I found a new way to enjoy my childhood tunes! I connected to my Bluetooth speaker and the nostalgia that it brought back for me warmed my heart.
It has been a fun evolution to watch the way I have enjoyed music change over time. Change is always both destruction and creation. The reason why it feels hard most of the time is because we get stuck on the destruction side of things.
My appreciation of this album reminded me how important it is to make sure we are seeing the full picture of change. Technology is moving quickly and there are certain downsides and unintended consequences to this growth, but there are also countless advantages too. This year, that meant I could enjoy music from my childhood in a whole new way.
What kind of music have you enjoyed this way? I’d love to hear your story- please comment below!
Happy holidays everyone!