Merry Christmas With Love: My Favorite Gift Ever Given

Being raised Jewish, even at the age of 35, Christmas still seems like a very foreign concept to me.  However, there is one beautiful Christmas song that I will have a strong connection with forever, Merry Christmas With Love.  Though it was apparently made famous by Clay Aiken in 2004, the song was written by Greg Wayne Davis and Billy Smiley, and originally recorded in 1983 by Sandi Patti.  My introduction to it came from my high school show choir, Music In Motion.  Merry Christmas With Love has been a staple of the group since (I think) the second year of it’s existence in 1987.

On November 9th of this year, I was invited to join a Facebook group called Merry Christmas With Love.  Created by three high school friends of mine, they proposed the idea of creating a virtual choir of alumni.  Our task was to record video of ourselves singing our respective parts to the song Merry Christmas With Love, and it would all be edited together and presented to our old choir directors as a Christmas gift.  Within a couple hours of the creation of this group, over 300 members had joined.  Members spanned from it’s original year in 1986 all the way to recent 2015 High School graduates.  Everyone loved the idea and wanted to participate.

When I actually sat down to do my recording, I made a couple of interesting observations.  First was that, even though I hadn’t performed this song since I graduated high school in 1999, I remembered both the lyrics and the tenor part almost perfectly.  It made me reflect on how strong a connection I have to the song, as well as Music In Motion.  Many of my best memories from high school are with performing with that group, which I was a member of over a decade before the show Glee made it cool to be a choir nerd 🙂

The second observation I made was how daunting a task it was to record my part.  All of my singing experiences have been in a group setting with a choir.  I’m used to many other people singing the same part I am, and working to blend my voice with the group.  Recording by myself, not having any other voices to sing with was kind of terrifying.  I think I did 3 or 4 recordings of myself singing my part in total.  I’d be lying if I said I was happy with any of them.  However, I had to remind myself that I know I can carry a tune, and that it will sound so much better when part of the full group.  With some hesitation, I uploaded my video for the project.

After three weeks of editing, the final video was complete.  There were a total of 80 alumni vocalists and band members who submit videos, as seen in this huge group photo:

Clap clap!

Here, for your viewing pleasure, is the finished product:

The video turned out absolutely amazing!  The group’s coordinators had been in contact with our choir director’s wife and children, who were all happy and excited to be involved with the project.  They presented it to him on Christmas morning while opening gifts, and captured a full video of him watching our gift to him:

Although, as I stated above, Christmas is a foreign concept to me, I definitely understand that giving is better than receiving.  Between regular choir, and the four separate extracurricular choirs offered at my high school, most people in this group likely spent more time with our directors than with our own parents at home during our high school years.  After our directors gave so much to us during those years, it feels extremely gratifying to give something back to them all these years later.  Music In Motion will always hold a special place in my heart, and so will the song Merry Christmas With Love.  Being 2015, there’s only one appropriate way to end this post.  #MIM4LIFE 🙂