News

STUCK MIDDLE: This is the time, and the place, for holiday tunes

By BILL HUMLEKER, Published: November 22, 2025

As I have written before, I love music of almost every variety.

I am not a musician in any sense other than I was taught to read music and endured my last piano lesson 60 years ago, in August of 1965. Nonetheless, I love listening to and appreciating just about everything from Parton to Paganini to Patti Page (anyone else remember her?). So, I am particularly happy during the holidays as, among other delights, there is wonderful music to hear everywhere.

The Hendersonville Symphony Orchestra has its holiday concert at 7 p.m. Friday Dec. 5, at BRCC … don’t miss it! A Flat Rock Playhouse Christmas, on stage through Dec. 21, is another not-to-be-missed musical delight. And, of course, our schools have choral, band and orchestral presentations throughout the season featuring our county’s young musicians. There is just no better way to get “in the mood” than hearing children sing and perform. Lucky, lucky us!

The Empress (TE … my love-the-holidays partner for many years) grew up hearing her mother’s and grandmothers’ kitchen radios playing all the secular seasonal favorites — Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Silver Bells, I’ll be Home for Christmas. Around my house it was more likely something from Handel’s Messiah playing on the hi-fi, or some Mezzo warbling Lo! How a Rose E’re Blooming, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s collection of traditional carols. And, naturally, my mother was not so secretly in love with the likes of Bing Crosby and Andy Williams, and we heard all of their seasonal music and watched their holiday television specials every year.

Traditionally, my family would take the train into Chicago for a weekend early in December, and delight in all the sights and sounds of the holidays in the city. Whether lunch in Marshall Field’s Walnut Room with a string quartet playing in the background, or a holiday special at one of the theaters, or the “Christmas over Bethlehem” special presentation at the Adler Planetarium, or a Sunday morning service at Chicago’s Fourth Presbyterian Church, wonderful holiday music, much of it live, was central to it all. I grow very nostalgic remembering those weekends.

For me, music makes memories, and therefore many of my best holiday memories are musically related. A certain carol will take me right back to a Christmas Eve church service, as quickly as the smell of gingerbread in the oven takes me back to Mom’s holiday kitchen with holiday music playing in the background.

These days, on our large-screen (or small!) TVs we have but to Search “Christmas Ambience” on YouTube and let it show us hours of colorful changing holiday décor, Christmas settings, snowy vistas (we Midwesterners like those …), and hear hours of any kind of holiday background music you can imagine.

Be all that as it may, we are very fortunate to have so much live music and seasonal entertainment available right here in HendoRock for us all to enjoy. Do get out and support our local talent and get on board our own Polar Express to an excellent, happy season!    

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Stuck in the Late Middle columnist Bill Humleker writes about family, culture and current events from his home in Flat Rock.