Growing up, everything was Polish, including Christmas music.

Memories of my my Mom & Dad, Busia and my mother's sisters, come back almost like it was yesterday.  I remember my Mom, Busia, and my aunts singing Polish Christmas songs as they gathered in Busia's kitchen on Coplin in Detroit.  They would all be melancholy.

And remembering my Dad in our home on Kilbourne in Detroit also takes me back to Christmases of long ago.  He would play records on the stereo in our finished basement, while he drank some 'Christmas cheer' and he would sing along in Polish.  My Dad was this huge icon to me who kept his pain on the inside, but I saw the emotional side of him as he sang these songs.  I know a big part of the emotion was for his Mom who died young.....when my Dad was in his teens.  I know how much he loved her and that he never stopped hurting from her death.  He and I spoke often of her in later years.  When he told me that I reminded him of her I was happy inside - for the Busia

I never met.  Unfortunately, I never asked him to elaborate on that statement and I am sad I

never found out what he meant.  But it makes me happy knowing that there was something

about me that reminded him of her.

As I write this post it is early morning.  I woke up here in Michigan to snow that the weathermen said we would not have for Christmas, but I am so glad they were wrong.  My Christmas trees are lit, the lights in the windows are on, and as I sit here drinking my raspberry/macadamia coffee I am melancholy.  I can't help not be on a Christmas Eve morning with all these thoughts.  Thinking of the Polish music and my Dad who was born in Mount Pleasant, PA 96 years ago.  His birthday was December 21st, normally the shortest day of the year (he mentioned that often). 

He was born to Joseph and Mary, and he was one of many children.

As for this CD, it arrived the other day from my sister who lives in Illinois.  She had me open it right away.  She found it last week and bought one for each of us.  We have been playing it since then.  This is the exact same music - from the record, Koledy by Mazowske, 

my Dad played so many years ago. 

Wesolych Swiat Bozego Narodzenia

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