CHRISTMAS EVE MEMORIES
RIU RIU CHIU
I have a sparkling visceral memory of my tenth Christmas Eve. My Mom and Dad and I had just come home from the snowy evening’s Candlelight Church Service (my absolute favorite service of the year)!
I remember tearing downstairs, two steps at a time, JUST in time to switch on the TV – and agonizing as it warmed up to receive the signal – on the floor in my brand new neon practically glow in the dark pink pleated mini dress with WHITE fishnet (real) stockings no less!! to watch The Monkees’ Christmas Special.
I loved The Monkees Show. It was "out of the box", fun loving, silly, carefree and sweet. I expected that this Holiday program would deliver the same that night.
But that night something drew me into the centre of the known world. I heard something more Holy, and more mystical than anything I had heard at church just an half an hour before.
I was moved desperately and deeply to tears when I heard - for the first time in my life - the 17th century carol, “Riu Chiu”, sung in 4 part harmony a capella by my beloved boy band (…we too had boy bands - even in 1967).
In my shocking pink mini dress, sprawled on my parent’s basement floor, I taped this beautiful song with my miniature reel-to-reel tape recorder, with my knees akimbo leaning on my elbows holding the old style microphone.
I had no idea what was being sung. I didn’t know the language at all, not one word - but the SOUNDS they were making! The melodic conversations tumbled over one another like cashmere wool rolled into soft balls. Time was arrested. The snowflakes flew up against basement window’s black night sky. It was a Sacred stillness, a mystical moment that has never left me. Its resonance has stayed with me for 40 years. No exaggeration.
By complete chance I happened to find this very sublime moment captured sailing in the ether, floating smoothly like a wide satin red prayer flag after all these years…
Imagine that it’s Christmas Eve and YOU are ten years old…waiting…waiting…
The Monkees singing, “Riu Chiu” (c. 1967) ©
Arranged and adapted by H. Diltz, C. Douglas, C. Faryer and J. Yester.
What are YOUR most profound Holiday memories?
What songs, smells, sounds take YOU back to the innocence of wonder?
What moment would YOU love to relive?
And if you could, how would that make you feel?
Joy to the World.
Peace is WITH YOU.
Ten...again...
Vivian
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