These are a few of my favorite things... favorite Christmas songs from some of my favorite singers: Amy Grant, Jill Johnson, Malena Ernman, Yohanna and Point of Grace

Amy Grant - Christmas Lullaby (I Will Lead You Home). http://t.co/52v82W0A0f My favorite song from her 1999 CD, A Christmas to Remember, :)!
— HallandaleBeachBlog (@hbbtruth) December 22, 2013

Amazing, amazing Amy Grant!
She sounded utterly fantastic and angelic at her Christmas concert at the then-MCI Center
in downtown Washington, D.C. in December of 1999, when she was in town as part of her national tour promoting her CD and third Christmas album, A Christmas to Remember, which featured the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, who was also there in Washington. 

That's only one of my two favorite Christmas albums, and one I took with me on my trip to snowy Stockholm in mid-January, which I played frequently in my room at the 4trappor B&B in Södermalm and then the next week in my hotel room at the wonderfully-convenient Omena Hotel Stockholm in Norrmalm, just a block or so and around the corner from the August Strindberg Intima Theatre, http://www.strindbergsintimateater.se/ -which unfortunately did not have shows while I was there.
I think I played Amy's CD everyday I was there.

The great thing about Christmas music is that the window of time you listen to it is so short you really can’t get tired of it.
— Amy Grant (@amygrant) December 9, 2013

Also part of the action at the concert was the sweet and powerful sounds of Points of Grace -and super-talented Michael W. Smith- my first time ever seeing them live, after hearing them for so many years on CDs.
It was heavenly!

The members of POG had gone to the same college in Arkansas as my best friend, 
Shannon, Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, and one of my favorite all-time photos of her was actually a shot of them at a table signing CDs down in Woodbridge, VA, with Shannon flashing that mega-watt smile of hers that always wowed people.

Anyway, that's how it sounded to me.

Judge for yourself...

Point of Grace - When Love Came Down http://t.co/4oE0mGgJNF Saw POG in 1999 in D.C. w/Amy Grant's Christmas tour -was BEYOND magical :)!
— HallandaleBeachBlog (@hbbtruth) December 22, 2013

Point of Grace - When Love Came Down, from their 1999 CD, A Christmas Story, one of my two favorite Christmas albums, the other being Amy's.

When I finally Saw POG in 1999 in D.C. with Amy Grant's Christmas tour, with that orchestra sound behind them, it was BEYOND magical :) !

This is when the group was composed of four very talented women: Shelley Breen, Denise Jones, Terry Jones and Heather Payne.

Point of Grace - O Holy Night. From POG's 1999 album 'A Christmas Story.' There's no substitute for perfect harmony! http://t.co/spX9n4j1gx
— HallandaleBeachBlog (@hbbtruth) December 22, 2013

Yohanna - Don't Save It All For Christmas Day - LIVE on TV3's En Sång För Hemlösa 2009 (A Song For The Homeless) http://t.co/ZKJHYumvkq :)!
— HallandaleBeachBlog (@hbbtruth) December 22, 2013

.@jilljohnsons: I väntan på julen. http://t.co/ly7FmmvxHD You all know how much I love Jill... saw this LIVE via @svt from Göteborg :)!
— HallandaleBeachBlog (@hbbtruth) December 22, 2013

.@Malena_Ernman sings Så Mörk Är Natten-Lucia (How Dark Is The Night - Lucia), Christmas Tour 2012, Växjö, Sweden :)! http://t.co/i6yHRr5mWY
— HallandaleBeachBlog (@hbbtruth) December 22, 2013

Something to inspire you:

HGTV Video: Amy Grant's Motor Home: The country music star's tour bus features a private lounge, two TVs and 10 bunks.
http://www.frontdoor.com/celebrity/amy-grants-motor-home-video

and something to remind you that Once Upon A Time, the American TV networks weren't afraid of allowing a religious subtext in a Christmas TV show, like they are now:


The Andy Griffith Show, S1E11, The Christmas Story, Originally aired on CBS-TV on December 19, 1960. Uploaded December 1, 2013. http://youtu.be/TpKn5ceZaQ4

You don't have to be Roy Black or Gerry Spence, you just have to care: Barney for the defense, your Honor

Barney for the defense
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppNMTQBhatM



Rafe Hollister (Jack Prince) sings Lonesome Road, Andy Griffith on guitar (1963)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDzUATl63vE

A Mayberry State of Mind/AMSOM is the online chapter of The Andy Griffith Show Rerun Watchers Club
http://www.youtube.com/user/AMSOMmp
http://amayberrystateofmind.com/default.aspx

http://www.mayberry.com/

http://www.youtube.com/user/AlexMOFUKA

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0341431/videogallery
http://www.tvland.com/shows/andy-griffith-show

Not surprisingly, The Andy Griffith Show was my favorite TV show as a small kid growing-up in mid-1960's Memphis, which was far, far away from a Mayberry existence before we left in 1968 for South Florida, three months after the MLK assassination there, and the subsequent riots and curfews, which I still remember.

The Tennessee National Guard drove their Army tanks right past our apt. complex at night on their way downtown as everyone in our neighborhood, young and old, watched quietly from the sidewalk, utterly transfixed, almost breathless, unsure of what the next day would bring.

Dr. King Is Slain By Sniper headline in the Memphis Commercial Appeal, April 6, 1968.

Because I was a very precocious kid and early reader, and was easily bored with kids books, just as Andy Griffith's hugely-popular TV show helped instill in me a certain moral compass about the right way you treat people, The Memphis Commercial Appeal was the newspaper that helped me learn to read and make sense of the wider world beyond the Mississippi River's banks.
http://www.commercialappeal.com/