Rockin’ around the Christmas tree

Now with Thanksgiving past and leftover turkey providing endless sandwiches, soups and pies, we turn our thoughts to Christmas.

Wreaths with berries and red bows will be hung on front doors and twinkling lights on eaves, and trees will turn every neighborhood into enchanted villages. We will prepare for the Christmas to come and reflect on the Christmases past. This is the melancholy of the season.

I can tell you that I was feeling pretty darn melancholy when I read that “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” hit the airwaves for the first time 52 years ago. Brenda Lee, aka Little Miss Dynamite, recorded that perennial favorite in 1958.

Though it seems like there has never been a time when we didn’t “rock around the Christmas tree,” I can’t actually remember the first time I heard the rock ‘n roll classic.

It may have been “American Bandstand” or it may have been another television show, I’m not clear on that, but I do remember seeing Brenda Lee sing it and thinking “Wow, that rocks!”

In 1958 at 10 years old I was caught in the crossroads of adolescence. I was still a little girl enjoying little girl things and believing that Santa would fulfill my Christmas dreams. But I wanted to be a teenager doing the jitterbug and wearing lipstick and Blue Waltz perfume.

That Christmas, the one of 1958, I received a Barbie doll. A genuine Barbie with a couple of outfits. If I had never torn open the packages and put them all away, I could have retired by now. But that is true of most of the toys we played with and often destroyed in childhood.

Also that Christmas I received a card from a relative with a $5 bill. This was a fortune to a 10-year-old in 1958.

The day after Christmas I took my fortune to J. J. Newberry’s and blew it on a Campbell’s Soup kids’ cooking set complete with eight miniature cans of soup, a pan to heat them in, a bowl and a ladle. I also bought a tube of bright red lipstick, which I wasn’t supposed to have, and a 45- rpm record of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” More items that could contribute to my retirement fund if only I still had them.

The soup was all heated and eaten, the lipstick was eventually confiscated by my mother, but that record was played over and over and over until it could be played no more.

Recently a friend showed me a newspaper clipping from 1964 that had a picture of me. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that I was ever sweet 16, but I do remember it quite well.

That Christmas my prize gifts were a pink angora sweater and a bucket bag, the pocketbook that was all the rage at the time. I received the annual card with a $5 bill and with it bought lipstick I did get to wear and a new 45-rpm record of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.”

I wore the pink angora sweater so much it started to unravel. The bucket bag, though a favorite of mine, I tossed out when the boyfriend whose name I had written all over it broke up with me. And “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” was played over and over and over until it could be played no more.

All of those relics of my youth are long gone but are still held dear in the museum of my memory. It’s comforting that Brenda Lee’s holiday classic is still a favorite 52 years later. The way I see it, “Rockin Around the Christmas Tree” will rock on for many more Christmases to come.

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