The Twelve Days of Christmas never made any sense to me. Who would want a partridge in a pear tree? Who would give such a gift? How would you wrap it? Would PETA approve?
(Don’t even get me started about the geese, swans and leapin’ lords.)
Luckily, our Morristown Green video vault includes a much more comprehensible version. The Twelve Days AFTER Christmas was a crowd favorite for years from The Christmas Singers:
Video: The 12 Days After Christmas:
This performance was recorded in December 2014 at the Morristown United Methodist Church.
Various iterations of The Christmas Singers have brought holiday joy for three decades, give or take.
The lineup shown here consisted of June Van Thoen, Patricia Ruggles, Wayne Walters and Darren O’Neill, accompanied by pianist Anita Gordon. Dave Sullivan gave us a hand with the video.
These much-anticipated noontime Yule concerts were endowed for years by the late author and historian John Cunningham (The Uncertain Revolution).
John wrote books into his 90s. It always was a treat to bump into him and his charming companion, the late Judy Kendall, at these festive shows.
June Van Thoen, a founding member of The Christmas Singers and retired music director at the church, sends season’s greetings from a lake in North Carolina Virginia, where she is riding out the pandemic with her husband Anton and an eagle in a pear tree.
Merry Christmas, June!
Check back tomorrow for another dollop of cheer from our video archive, as our Happy Virtual Holidays series strives to join us in spirit, if not in person, during this COVID Christmas.
Merry Christmas, Kevin! What a blast from the past! And the lake is in Virginia, just on the south side of Richmond. (I love North Carolina, too.) And I love Morristown and miss you all there. Blessings!