It snowed again last night.  Don't get me wrong, the world covered in a blanket of white is beautiful, but I swear it's snowed more frequently this winter than my previous ones here. Edit: Check out that mountain of snow! You can barely see the FedEx truck over it!


I was a little hesitant to choose Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! as one of the songs of the day because it feels like I'm encouraging the weather. To be fair, I love snow, it's the other wintry weathers I don't like (Ice, sleet, hail, windchill factors). Fun trivia: This song was written by lyricist Sammy Cahn and composer Jule Styne in July 1945 on one of the hottest days on record. Also, despite this song being treated as a Christmas song, it makes no mention of Christmas itself.


So my favorite version of this song is Aaron Neville's. His Soulful Christmas album brings back memories of Christmases at my Aunt's house, with her dancing while cooking the dinner or baking Christmas Cake. It's funny, but I believe the reason we love Christmas music so much are the memories we've associated with it. And Aaron Neville is able to convey the pure delight he has with the snow.



I have more versions of my other song, Winter Wonderland, for some reason, including two little known versions by Byron Lee & The Dragonaires. Here's something confusing. The two songs, Winter Wonderland Reggae and Winter Wonderland, are great Jamaican instrumentals, but Winter Wonderland Reggae has a ska beat and Winter Wonderland has a reggae beat. I know, we don't have the winter wonderland the song speaks of in Jamaica, so I'd be pretty skeptical if these versions had the original lyrics, but luckily they're instrumental. Now if they changed "In the meadow we can build a Snowman" to "On the beach we can build a sandcastle" then it'd be fine.


Speaking of which, that little section of the song -
"In the meadow we can build a snowman,
then pretend that he is Parson Brown.
He'll say 'Are You Married?' We'll say 'No man,
but you can do the job when you're in town!"
- has an interesting history. Apparently back then (1930s), there were traveling parsons who would marry people if they didn't have a minister of their own faith in town.

Another non traditional version that I'm a big fan of is found in Natalie Cole's Christmas Medley. Winter Wonderland is the second song in the medley. Of course I'm a fan of virtually all of Natalie Cole's Christmas songs, so there's some bias. My favorite traditional versions are from another medley, Henry Mancini's Medley: Winter Wonderland & Silver Bells, and Charlotte Church's Winter Wonderland. Whatever happened to Charlotte Church? She had this lovely voice and now when I try to search for her version of Winter Wonderland, I get the video below, just compare the two versions. So disappointed.



Finally, like the rest of Kenny G's music, his versions of Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! and Winter Wonderland both put me to sleep. I apologize in advance to any Kenny G fans out there. It's a great album to listen to after you've had Christmas breakfast or Christmas dinner and you want to take a nap.






Youtube videos of songs mentioned: