Holiday Spectacular from 2000

featuring Ann Hampton Callaway, Linda Lavin,Alice Playten,Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks, Robin & Linda Williams, Howard McGillin, Bill McLaughlin, and Peter Schickele

Listen to the classic show from 2000

A Prairie Home Companion welcomes Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks, singer Ann Hampton Callaway, actors Alice Playten, Linda Lavin, and Howard McGillin, and Robin & Linda Williams. Plus, Bill McLaughlin and Peter Schickele square off to determine who can write the most unusual piece of holiday music. Listen now or join us via our Instagram page, where the link debuts at 5 p.m. CT on Saturdays.

Highlights include talk of Christmas and holiday traditions, “My Winter’s Coat” from Alice Playten, “The Secret of Life” from Linda Lavin, a “Christmas Love Song” from Ann Hampton Callaway, a new take on the classic poem “’Twas the Night Before Christmas, a Tom Keith-aided version of ‘Twelve Days of Christmas,” plus Marvin and Mavis Smiley share favorites from “Mountain Merry Christmas,” Duct Tape, Powdermilk, and the latest News from Lake Wobegon.

Vince Giordano grew up on Long Island listening to old 78s on his grandmother’s Victrola. He joined the musicians’ union at 14, playing a number of instruments. After high school, he joined the Navy and played in a big band that toured South America playing jazz, rock ’n’ roll, and music indigenous to the countries they visited. He later formed his own band, The Nighthawks, which continues to perform at Birdland and other venues. Also a big-band historian and collector, Giordano has more than 30,000 scores in his collection, most of which were found on cross-country trips spent poking around in musicians’ basements.

Peter Schickele is a composer, musician, author, and satirist. He is widely recognized as one of the most versatile artists in the field of music. He was born in Ames, Iowa, and brought up in Washington, D.C., and Fargo, North Dakota. By the time he graduated from Swarthmore, he had already composed and conducted four orchestral works, a great deal of chamber music, and some songs. He went on to study composition at the Juilliard School of Music. As a composer, Peter’s commissions are numerous and varied — including works for the Saint Louis Symphony, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Audubon String Quartet, the Minnesota Orchestral Association, and many other such organizations. And as a satirist, he is well known as perpetrator of the oeuvre of the now-classic P.D.Q. Bach.

“Individually their voices can melt cheese, and in duet they can do all-purpose welding,” Garrison Keillor has said of Robin and Linda Williams. Singing the music they love, be it bluegrass, folk, old-time, or acoustic country, these two have carved out a more than five-decade career that has taken them from Carnegie Hall to the Hollywood Bowl. They first appeared on A Prairie Home Companion in 1975, the same year they recorded their first album. In 2021, they self-released Better Day A-Coming, featuring their newest classic “Old Lovers Waltz.”

In addition to her performances on A Prairie Home Companion, Alice Playten appeared on Broadway in Gypsy; Oliver; Hello, Dolly!; George M; Henry Sweet Henry (Theatre World Award, Tony nomination); Rumors; and Spoils of War (Drama Desk nomination). Numerous Off-Broadway credits include her two Obie Award-winning performances as Mick Jagger in Lemmings and Mamie Eisenhower in First Ladies Suite. She voiced cartoons, sang at the Met, and had a recurring role on TV’s Frasier. Alice passed away in 2011.

Linda Lavin was born in Portland, Maine, and was educated at the College of William and Mary. She has appeared in numerous Broadway productions, including: The Diary of Anne Frank (Tony nomination, Best Supporting Actress), The Sisters Rosensweig, Gypsy, and Broadway Bound (Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics, Helen Hayes Awards, Best Actress), among others. On television, she was the female lead on the weekly series Alice. She has recorded countless albums and appeared at Carnegie Hall and Rainbow & Stars. She established the Linda Lavin Arts Foundation in Wilmington, NC, to foster the arts in education and started an after-school theater program for inner-city girls.

And here is a new holiday take on the “’Twas the Night Before Christmas”:

’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a sound could be heard, no barks or meows.
Not a creature was stirring, but lay perfectly still
In accordance with custom, and law, and God’s Will.
The Bible was placed by the chimney with care,
In hopes of some preaching and an hour of prayer.
The children were sleeping all snug in their beds,
Flat on their backs, and their neatly combed heads
Were turned at right angles, all parallel,
And their hands at their sides, and their chests rose and fell
Quietly breathing and dreaming good thoughts,
As they’d been trained since they were small tots.
And Mama in her nightgown tightly buttoned to the throat
Lay sleeping in bed, where I sat and wrote
By lamplight a list of righteous precautions
I found in St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians,
When out on the lawn there arose such a sound,
As if something from heaven had dropped to the ground.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
(Though when I say “breast,” it’s a metaphor, you know),
The moon on the snow made it all bright below,
When what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a man whose visage was dark and severe,
Dressed in black hat and a black woolen cloak,
And he lifted his head and solemnly spoke,
”Wickedness! Turpitude! Scandal and shame!
Laziness! Lust! I call you by name!
Man's sinful nature! His decline and his fall!
I’ve come to do battle and vanquish you all
Who have strayed from the truth and wandered and sinned!"
As dry leaves that fly up before a great wind,
So up to the housetop the gentleman flew,
With a bag full of cinders and lumps of coal too.
As I drew in my head, too astonished to think,
Down the chimney he came as quick as a wink.
He was dressed all in black, from his head to his foot,
He was covered with ashes and cinders and soot.

His eyes, how they glared! His pupils were burnin’,
His cheeks were like glaciers. His dimples, there were none.
His eyes were bright red, and his nostrils were redder.
And his nose was so sharp it could open a letter!
His mouth was jagged with razor-sharp teeth,
There were six on the top and two fangs underneath.
He had a long face and his belly was boney
That shook when he spoke from sheer acrimony.
He was skinny and hard, a righteous old elf,
And I shuddered, though I am a Baptist myself.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
He consulted a list that some diligent clerk
Had kept of the children’s failings and flaws,
Grammatical errors and social faux pas,
All the things they had done that of course they shouldn’t’ve
And the good things they did that were not quite good enough,
Every act that was lax or unorthodox,
And he filled all the stockings with sharp little rocks,
And cinders and thistles and ugly toadstools,
Except for my stocking, which he filled with bright jewels.
And shaking his head, he drew his cloak tight,
And I heard him exclaim, ere he rose out of sight,
”Let the children be quiet, no running, no noise,
And be satisfied with small rocks for their toys
And let them spend Christmas in patient forbearance,
And fast and be silent and wait on their parents.”

(c) 2000 by Garrison Keillor

Serenity at 70, Gaiety at 80: Why We Should Keep on Getting Older contains 25 Rules of the Game to make one’s life simpler and more enjoyable. Here is rule #2:

Less is more. Appreciate what you have. Jesus said so and so did Buddha and Emily Dickinson and Buster Keaton. This is the great lesson of old age. Give up wanting the monumental, the dream home, the trophy husband, the hit show, the Medal of Honor, the Pulitzer Prize for Parody, NO. 1 on the list of American Influencers, a close genuine working relationship with Russell Sheridan Thomas. Accept the Good Enough. Love your mediocre grandkids along with the geniuses. Want less, then want even less than that. Jesus said, “Think not what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink. Ask your wife.” And so I content myself with a kale salad and a glass of cold tap water out of the faucet, and content leads to contentedness. Just as Buddha said. Mysterious, but it really works.

More suggestions coming from the book that The Saturday Evening Post called “a self-published masterwork on aging.” Get the book.

Yes, the new year brings us an election season again. Everyone should vote. This message has been featured on our best-selling baseball hat and also on this navy T-shirt.

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