The last traces of Christmas

I always get a little blue right after Epiphany. It means the old, brittle tree must loose its treasure and be shown the door, that the ornaments must be placed back into their plastic bags, and the festive garland that adorned our living room perimeter must be untacked and stored away.

Christmas music now sounds as a farewell to the ghost of a Christmas passed.

(Ok. I own up to a tiny bit of melodrama here.)

As a child, one of my favorite Christmas songs was "We Three Kings".



Here's a Celtic rendition of the carol:



While I was searching around for music related to Christmastide and the Epiphany, I came upon Bach's Christmas Oratorio. I've never heard it before. Though it is mentioned in the Wikipedia article that Bach recycled some of the music from his earlier stuff (parody), it still piques my interest enough for me to check it out.

At least most of the Pine Isle villages and a few winter camping pieces don't have to come down quite yet. It's still winter for a couple of months and those pieces are more wintery than Christmassy.