"He Knew How To Keep Christmas Well" - Now Is The Caroling Season by Fred Waring & The Pennsylvanians

"And it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.” -Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Now Is The Caroling Season – Fred Waring And The Pennsylvanians

I’ve felt aimless this season; I’m sure I’m not alone. It’s a common end-of-year problem, exacerbated by the world around us. “Doomerism” has become a societal theme…everything is bad, it’s going to get worse, you should feel bad about it, nothing can be done.

I’m not a doomer but even for me it’s tough to avoid, so I find outlets where I can. I love Christmas music, I listen to it nonstop from Thanksgiving through the New Year, so in 2024 I doubled down. And in doing so, I not only found distraction and reflection, but I found a little bit of hope too.

At a very young age the equation “Christmas = Joy” was ingrained on my soul, largely thanks to my grandparents. We lived 10 minutes away so visits were frequent. I would spring through the snow into the tuck-under garage, rest against the stacked firewood to kick off my boots, and get inside as fast as possible.

The house screamed 1970s. The garage entered the basement, grandpa’s domain. Thick sky-blue carpet throughout (bathroom included), dark “wood” paneling, a brick fireplace with plastic holly and stockings accumulated over 40 years. A utility room with fridge full of Coors, grandpa’s “office” where he practiced trombone and wrote letters on an IBM Selectric III, a candy dish (always full), and a 1950s artificial Christmas tree with vintage ornaments and equally vintage fire-hazard lights.

Upstairs was grandma’s domain; the main living room, kitchen, dining room, 3 bedrooms down a narrow hall. The soul of the house was the kitchen. Guests always woke to coffee and pancakes cooked in the bacon fat. Pie was usually present, cookies a constant, and at Christmas there were always several to choose from. In the main window a 1930s electric luminary that my dad was convinced would eventually burn the house down. A large Christmas tree packed tight with colorful lights, silver garland, and homemade ornaments with names and dates for everyone in the family.

Both of my grandparents went above and beyond to make it a happy time of year. Grandpa took it the extra mile, though, because that’s what his family did. His grandparents had been immigrants from Germany, and he continued the traditions they had brought: carols in German, gifts opened on Christmas Eve, pfeffernüsse cookies, and aggressive decoration.

A 2^nd Generation American, he grew up in an immigrant German community in northeast Iowa. The world wars brought hardship as they sent their sons off to Europe to fight their own cousins. The Espionage Act of 1917 and Sedition Act of 1918 made it challenging to maintain their heritage; the circumstances of the 2^nd World War led to widespread shame, and mostly ended any public pride of German-ness.

Christmas offered a safe haven for their heritage. So many American traditions were imported from the United Kingdom, themselves originating with Prince Albert. German immigrants and their families were safe to celebrate their heritage in this context, and they put their whole hearts in it.

Christmas at the Krueger household in Denver, Iowa December 24th or 25th, 1946. Grandpa, age 18, is seated second from right. His dad Carl Krueger Jr. is leaning on the piano in white shirt and tie, his mother Martha (Buss) Krueger is holding the baby. Her father, or as my grandpa referred to him, "Grampa Buss" is seated in the dark suit next to her. He was born in Pomerania in 1876 and had a thick German accent that my grandpa would frequently imitate in relating many stories about this good man. 

In passing this on to his children and grandchildren grandpa was able to relive his own happy youth and honor his heritage. And as always with him, there was music, and the baseline soundtrack of Christmas in the Krueger house was Fred Waring & the Pennsylvanians.

Fred Waring

The 33 1/3 rpm long-play (LP) record was introduced in 1948 and with it, the modern concept of an "album". Compared to the shellac 78 rpm records they replaced, LPs were made of PVC with much finer grooves and a far less abrasive surface that drastically improved sound quality, while also extending the length of play. By the mid 1950s one of the marks of your standing in society was possession of a quality high-fidelity (“HiFi”) system. This was when the Christmas Album was born.

Big Ten Legend Fred Waring was born in 1900 and attended Penn State University; he was rejected by the glee club but found success fronting a “banjo orchestra”. The banjo orchestra broke into the mainstream in 1922 after a concert at the University of Michigan led to a 6-week engagement in Ann Arbor, then Detroit, radio, and national touring. From 1923 to 1930 they were one of the best-selling bands for Victor Records and were campus hits with “Collegiate”, “I’ve Never Seen a Straight Banana”, and “You’ve Gotta Be a Football Hero”.

A savvy businessman, Waring was constantly refining his product. The banjo orchestra became a dance band, added a women’s chorus, then a men’s, radio and TV shows, opened a Poconos resort, sponsored a Penn State choral workshop (where archives are held), and provided financial backing for the first commercially successful kitchen blender, the “Waring Blendor”. Jonas Salk used this blender in developing the polio vaccine (relevant!).

By the 1950s, Waring was flooding the market with recordings including multiple Christmas Albums. None of them are groundbreaking, but some feature surprising creativity. Waring utilized the best that recording technology had to offer to create audio effects...songs that faded into one another, instrumental mixing, multi-tracking, effects to emote a particular time and place; a busy holiday train station, or a blizzard muffling distant church bells.

Engaging talents like chorale director Robert Shaw and arranger Leroy Anderson, Waring carved out a firm space in the American Christmas music lexicon. His albums established a standard format and template for more famous efforts by other artists. The main treasure of these recordings is that Waring  captured a variety of less-common carols, some of which have largely faded from the collective consciousness; many of them I have not found anywhere else, but my grandparents assured me they were once common.

Last week I did my annual listen to Now Is The Caroling Season. Out of nowhere, a song buried on Side 2 hit me with such force that I keep returning to it to explore the meaning I’ve found.

The Album

Now Is The Caroling Season was released in HiFi format in 1957, then in stereo in 1959. It contains 22 carols performed professionally if unremarkably. Most are what you would expect: a good choir performing a carol...but some deserve more attention. The album opens with “Now Is The Caroling Season” and returns to it as a refrain several times throughout, the one nod to the Waring's creative production skills.

Other highlights of Side 1 are a meandering arrangement of “Winter Wonderland” evoking a slow stroll down a country lane. “In Sweetest Jubilee”, a German carol from 1328, finishes in a triumphant cut time fanfare. My Side 1 favorite is the obscure 1860 English carol “Masters in This Hall” which gives the choir which features evocative dynamic changes and counterpoint between male and female vocal parts. The lyrics are subversive; a poor narrator telling a rich man that Christ’s birth will “raise up the poor” and “cast down the proud”. Little wonder, perhaps, that it is mostly forgotten.

Side 2 opens with a brief refrain of the title song which then moves into the widely known Leroy Anderson arrangement of “Sleigh Ride” (if you think you don’t know it, yes you do). “Heigh Ho The Holly” is a carol interesting mostly for its obscurity; I don’t think I’ve ever heard it anywhere else and Google turns up very little background. The album ends with the opposing themes of the Nativity; a gentle acapella “It Was a Night of Wonder” followed by the martial, highly orchestrated “March of the Kings”.

The song that forever changed my view of this album is Track 6 of Side 2, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”. This version of the carol had been a hit for Bing Crosby the previous year (1956). Johnny Marks adapted portions of a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to create an American Christmas standard. The history of the poem is worth exploring, as much for the stanzas that were not included as the ones that were.

In the early 1860s Longfellow’s world was devastated by the loss of his wife in a tragic accident, the Civil War, and the severe wounding of his son Charles serving in the Union Army at the inconclusive Battle of Mine Run. A committed abolitionist, Longfellow felt guilt that his ideals had played a role in the injury and near-death of his son. 

On Christmas Day, 1863 Longfellow poured his soul into a 7 stanza poem he called “Christmas Bells”, the poem Johnny Marks would adapt almost a century later. Marks included only Stanzas 1, 2, 6, and 7 and this is the common carol today. Stanzas 3-5 can be sung, but are a rarity.

Stanzas 1 and 2 reflect nostalgically on the sound of church bells and carols on Christmas. Stanza 3 sets the stage for disaster as it refers to a world “ringing, singing on its way”; implying a blissful ignorance about to be broken. The break is confirmed in Stanza 4, as cannons “from the South” drown the carols. Stanza 5 is bitter; dreams are shattered, hypocrisy revealed. It is worth quoting in full.

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent

And made forlorn

The households born

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was Stanza 6 (Verse 3 in the recording) that wrestled my attention from a work e-mail this week and left me staring into the distance in reflection. It is historic and yet immediate. Despair and sadness captured across the ages, instantly relatable for souls whose understanding of a world they thought they knew has been deeply shaken. Longfellow found the words my heart could not form.

And in despair I bowed my head;

“There is no peace on earth,” I said;

“For hate is strong

And mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Fred Waring reflects the emotional shift musically by reducing the dynamics with each verse and also creating space between the verses. Verse 3/Stanza 6 begins with nearly a whisper, as if the whole choir is singing through tears into cupped hands. It also changes the last note, dropping a third rather than a single step as in the first two verses, signaling another shift in mood.

Out of silence comes Verse 4/Stanza 7; the choir sings with full-throated vibrato, backed for the first time in the piece by the full orchestra behind. Longfellow has felt his pain and now he puts it aside for hope.

 
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

"The wrong shall fail,

The right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

The song ends with a sotto voce refrain of “good-will to men” as bells and piano gradually peal in the background.

Longfellow’s faith, such as it was, is unclear. His brother wrote that “He [Longfellow] did not care to talk much on theological points; but he believed in the supremacy of good in the world and in the universe.” He is often grouped with the Transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson, though not formally a member of this group. Therefore the carol is best read in the common vernacular of the time, and can inspire those of religious belief or of none.

The work must be done with our hands, whether guided by an active God or carried wholly by ourselves. The song and poem do not salve our souls with false assurances. They are meant to acknowledge our sadness, then spur us to action. The wrong shall not fail of its own accord, nor the right prevail by hope alone. Doom is self-defeating. We move, sometimes forward, others back. But we move.

I have heard this rendition of the song hundreds of times over 42 years. It never struck me until this week. And now, when I am sad or angry or fearful, I have turned back to it to allow me to re-center and move forward again. And in doing so I think fondly back to grandpa, to his parents, and to their parents, who did not let the world carry them along, but instead took what steps they could, many of them small, to create a better world for those to come.

Where to Find It

I have two original HiFi pressings of the album, one with significant imperfections throughout, the other with significant damage to one track (“White Christmas”). I also have a stereo CD re-release from 2000. The CD re-release has significantly better bass response and higher fidelity for the backing musicians. On Discogs, original HiFi pressings can be found for $1-5, stereo remasters for $1-10, and the 2000 CD version $6-15 on Discogs.

The album is also available in its entirety on Spotify, AppleMusic, and YouTube.

The Krueger Score

Grandpa had a system for scoring his records, recorded with ballpoint pen on the record sleeves. While there is some variation over the years, in general he assigned a check for strong performances and a star for something he particularly liked. In extraordinary circumstances he would add additional notes. The Krueger Score are his recorded comments on a particular album.

Unfortunately, grandpa did not record any scores for these albums. I can only tell you that from the frequency of his playing them, they mattered to him deeply and that is score enough.