I am not a sentimental person. One time, shortly after we were married, The KingofHearts and I were driving along near Christmastime to look at inappropriate and gaudy Christmas light displays and that awful song Christmas Shoes came on the radio. He asked if I'd ever heard it before and I said no, so he turned up the volume. We drove around on a peaceful December night, looking at the stars and people's expressions of love and joy for the season, and I managed to listen in silence until it got to that climactic part of the song where he sings:

Sir I wanna buy these shoes for my Momma please
It's Christmas Eve and these shoes are just her size
Could you hurry Sir?
Daddy says there's not much time
You see she's been sick for quite a while
And I know these shoes will make her smile
And I want her to look beautiful
If Momma meets Jesus tonight

I involuntarily suppressed a gag reflex and yelled at the top of my lungs, "GAAAAAH!! WHAT KIND OF CRAPPY SONG IS THAT?"

He still reminds me of that and a few years later when my stepson announced that his favorite song was Christmas Shoes, it was a bone of contention in the family for weeks.

A few weeks ago, I was trying to explain this song that made the rounds in my church community during the 70s to The KingofHearts. Everyone played it, everyone talked about how wonderful it was, and every youth leader tried to work it into Young Women's lessons any chance they got for the big finish where they bring all the teenagers to tears. I'm told there was a filmstrip that went along with it; I do not remember that. What I do remember is that my mother bought the record (yes, I said 'record,' not 'cd,' - you wanna make something of it?). Anyway, my grandmother and my aunt were both visiting at the time and my mother had just picked up the record and put it on for the first time for all of us. By the end of the song, my mother and my aunt had bawled great tears which were now pooling at their feet, so touched were they. Grandma and I were all "Puleeeeeze... so what?" That's the first time I really knew I carried her genes.

Coincidentally, just a few days after I was trying to describe the incredible cheesy-ness of the song to my husband, my mother found the video and emailed it to me. I'll have you know that she now thinks the song is a cheesy as I did back then. I, however, think it's much worse. Created in the 70s, I'll Build You a Rainbow describes the Mormon belief that families can be together forever. So I'll put it to you:




Awwww, sniff sniff?

or

GAAAH?