Recent Articles
 

 

Timeless Enya, for All Seasons

Irish enchantress Enya has offered not a Christmas album, but rather an album-length meditation on the Yuletide season, its sound, its totems, its joys, its summons to reflection and introspection.
by David McGee
 

 
 

From The Inkwell: An Animated Christmas

Four DVDs, five timeless holiday shows worthy for inclusion in any Christmas video collection. Stories well told, with humor, warmth, sensitivity. wisdom and outstanding animation. All essential titles for any serious Yuletide ...
by David McGee
 

 

 

Hag Saw It All Coming

Originally issued on Capitol in 1973 as Merle Haggard's Christmas Present: Something Old, Something New, Merle Haggard's Christmas album has only 10 cuts, but all have a special--and many a prescient--feeling about them. Hag sa...
by David McGee
 

 
 

Tales of Two Carols

Origin stories: 'In the Bleak Midwinter' and 'Angels We Have Heard on High'
by David McGee
 

 

 

Suffused With Beauty

Nancy Lamott and beauty were on intimate terms. It radiated from her warm personality, resonated in her tender vocals, and suffused the recordings she made before succumbing to cancer in 1995 at age 43. Her lone Christmas albu...
by David McGee
 

 
 

In All Weathers, Glad Tidings

The Persuasions were just not any group of a cappella practitioners--they were the best, solid in every way, with lead singer Jerry Lawson standing out as one of the great singers of his time. The group's Christmas album, like...
by David McGee
 

 

 

‘You’ll Go Down In History’—And How

You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen… But do you know the real-life tragedy that spurred Robert May to write a poem for his four-year-old daughter that became a cultural and multimedia phenomenon? Rudolph takes fl...
by David McGee
 

 
 

The First Christmas Stamps

It may seem like Christmas stamps have been around pretty much forever in some form, but in fact the U.S. did not issue a Yuletide stamp until 1962. Canada, in 1889, beat everyone to the punch with its Queen Victoria-approved C...
by David McGee
 

 

 

Christmas 1974: Santa (USPS) Brings the 1st Self-Adhesive Stamp

Those self-adhesive stamps we so love? Christmas 1974 brought the first of what were then considered experimental issues, featuring the Dove of Peace weathervane from George Washington's Mount Vernon home. Much trial-and-error ...
by David McGee
 

 
 

The Deep Roots Yuletide Baedeker 2021

The one, the only, the Deep Roots Yuletide Baedeker for 2022 is hot off the presses. Your guide to everything vital to nourish the spirit during the holiday season--our Christmas best to you!
by David McGee