Thank you, Nostalgia.

For the next week or so, until Thanksgiving rolls around, Little Sister and I will be filling this blog with a generous supply of the things we're thankful for. We're embracing the season. Some of the things we're thankful for might be down right silly. But, please, no judgments. We'll thank you to take our thankfulness with a grain of salt, and some spiked eggnog.

Today, I'm thankful for nostalgia. For sentimentality. For all those feelings of anticipation that herald the holidays. Sentimentality in New York looks like sitting in the Marquis theater in the Times Square Marriott, while listening to the strains of one of Broadway's newest musicals: A White Christmas.

Dad and I attended one of the preview performances together last night (in honor of my embarrassingly belated birthday gift to him). For several hours we relived the performances immortalized by Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, etc. etc. in the 1954 film version of the musical. At one point, the actors broke character and invited audience members to join in a sing-a-long to the strains of Irving Berlin's most well known song.

Although I enjoyed the evening, I mostly enjoyed the feelings of sentimentality it evoked...

Memories of watching the movie with my siblings...
Memories of snow, and sledding down the hill in our backyard and into the woods (and sometimes, for the inept sledder, through the woods and into the creek)...
Memories of wrapping frozen fingers around a warm mug of hot chocolate...
Mostly, memories of togetherness...

"With 'White Christmas,' [Irving] Berlin created an anthem that spoke eloquently to its historical moment, offering a comforting Christmastime vision to a nation frightened and bewildered by the Second World War. But it also resonated with some of the deepest strains in American culture: yearning for an idealized New England past, belief in the ecumenical magic of the 'merry and bright' Christmas season, pining for the sanctuaries of home and hearth. Its dreamy scenery belongs to the same tradition as Currier and Ives's landscapes and Robert Frost's 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.' The song's images of sleigh rides and falling snow and eager children capture the mythic essence of the American Christmas... Indeed, in writing 'White Christmas,' Berlin lit on a universal ideal: the longing for Christmas snowfall, now keenly felt everywhere from New Hampshire to New Guinea, seems to have originated with Berlin's song."

-from the Introduction to White Christmas: The Story of an American Song by Jody Rosen