Celebrating the new Christmas classics of tuba concerts and high-production-value cards

Dec. 26, 2015 7 AM PT

You know you’re in trouble when you’re at an all-tuba holiday concert, and your date for the evening — in this case, my buddy Big-Wave Dave — leans over during the audience singalong and tries to get you to harmonize.

“Good King Wenceslas looked out, on the Feast of Stephen....”

Here’s how it was supposed to work: The giant orchestra of tubas would play the first verse, then the audience would join in on the second verse.

That’s a fine plan, clearly explained, except that Big-Wave is so taken with the moment, so enchanted by the sound of hundreds of tubas up on stage playing the Christmas classics, that he sings all the time. And fortissimo too. It’s like being stuck in a phone booth with Burl Ives.

Since Big-Wave bought dinner, I don’t have the heart to tell him that he shouldn’t be singing in the first round, that I’d prefer to just hear this herd of tubas, the unfettered basso-profundo of all that heavy metal, perhaps the finest rumbling acoustic ever produced.

You know the sound big wooden ships make when they rub up against a dock? That’s the mystical sound these tubas are making, like whales in the first stages of courtship.

Came out in a storm for this, on a chilly December night. We’d decided to do a pre-tuba tailgate, since the very word “tailgate” seems to inspire me, makes me hunger for companionship and comfort food. Into a local pub we went in search of a Feast of Stephen. The night was rainy; the bar smelled of martyrs and wet wool.

When the check came, Big-Wave reached for his wallet — chicken lo mein and a couple of ales — and off we went to the concert in my aging Camaro, red as Santa’s sleigh.

“Is this the car Hasselhoff drove?” Big-Wave asks of the old Camaro.

“Yeah,” I lie.

That’s the sort of holidays we’ve had so far, riddled with myth and deceit. And they’re not even over. Trust me, our tree will not come down the day after Christmas. It may not come down at all.

Look, what I’m saying is that the holidays just make everyone nuts. Our kids seem to have inherited the same defective gene their grandmother had, the one that builds Christmas up to an impossible level. No holiday could ever live up to such expectations.

All four kids still believe in Santa, for example. Posh believes in Santa too. I’m the only skeptic in the entire house. I keep reminding them that Santa Claus is, in essence, a socialist concept. Besides, the idea that freebies are based on good behavior is a form of social control that dates to the River Nile.

I mentioned this to my younger daughter while she was decorating the tree, this theory of a socialist Santa. As is usually the case, she ignored me, lost and a little drunk on her own dreamy thoughts of Christmas.

“Daddy, did Jesus invent twinkle lights?” she asked.

I referred her to Big-Wave Dave, a.k.a. “Uncle Big,” a.k.a. “Uncle Big-Wave Dave.”

You can imagine how that conversation went.

“Uncle Big-Wave Dave, do you remember who invented twinkle lights? Was it Jesus?”

He probably just started singing. “Good King Wenceslas looked out …”

Meanwhile, I’m thumbing through the Christmas cards, admiring how much our friends’ kids have grown and how the older ones have started to resemble their parents. These cards are just tremendous. I mean, look at those beautiful Scribner kids. And the Ballards? More blond hair than all of Finland.

One family decided that a photo card wasn’t enough, and now sends a DVD. I think Spielberg directed it. Julia Roberts starred. Their card had a bigger production budget than “Star Wars.”

Too much? I’m not the sort of person who judges others. But the whole holiday card phenomenon seems to have become a tad competitive. Next year, I think we might gather the kids on the roof to perform a live Nativity. Too much? Oh, give it a chance.

Yet, I have this theory about holiday cards: that the almost mandatory use of family photos reflects a fundamental change in how we regard our children. Like ornaments. Like twinkle lights. Like the things we are proudest of in the entire world.

While that may not be all good, it certainly isn’t all bad.

It’s just Christmas — old and new, pious and whimsical, brassy and soulful.

And the sum of all our senses.

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Twitter: @erskinetimes

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