Merry Christmas (afternoon edition)

Charlie is taking advantage of this op-pause in her busy Christmas schedule to wish you all a very Merry Christmas. She has no tradition of Christmas shooting (though the idea has crossed her mind on more than one occasion), and doesn't share AM's rich East Tennessee heritage. But Kansas rednecks do a few things right, and in Charlie's family, Christmas Eve is one of them. The highlight of which is singing Christmas carols, which is every bit as hokey and white-bread as you imagine. It would be worse if one of Charlie's cousins wasn't a professional opera singer and another a country singer-songwriter (this side of the family are all tall, musical, and athletic...an amusing thought for any readers who've ever met your faithful blogger).

After the usual renditions of Silent Night, Jingle Bell Rock, etc., we get around to Charlie's favorite: Christmas in the Trenches, John McCutcheon's classic telling of the 1914 Christmas truce (it's obviously not a Christmas carol, but neither is Let's Talk Dirty in Hawaiian, which is also an annual request). McCutcheon explains how he came to write the song in the video below; music starts at 2:00. Do yourself a favor and listen.