Did anyone else have a holiday concert when they were in elementary school (or perhaps you called it grade school)? For some reason I thought of that today. Perhaps it was the NSYNC tunes, despite the fact that none of those would've been featured in our musical program.
Each grade was assigned the same song year after year, and there was a perceived escalation of the songs' cool factor until you reached the pinnacle in fifth grade. The only year I'm drawing a blank on is first grade, but something makes me want to say that was Jingle Bells. Kindergarteners sang All I Want For Christmas is My Two Front Teeth, for obvious reasons. And second graders were unenthusiastically stuck with Deck the Halls.
Things started to get fun in third grade; not only was there singing, but choreography as well. You'd be amazed at how much fun Up on the Housetop can be when you're eight years old. You may also be amazed at how long you can retain such choreography (twenty years and counting). And in fourth grade, we were given permission to sing both version of Rudolph. After singing it properly, we were allowed to amuse ourselves by throwing in nonsense ad libs - "Like George Washington!"
But the pinnacle, the culmination of an elementary school singing career, was the fifth grade performance of Jingle Bell Rock. You got to wear sunglasses. Indoors. At night. We prepared for the moment in December when the classes would unite to rehearse...and then the bomb was dropped. Fifth graders were being relegated to Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree. Let the uprising begin. I don't actual recall how we boycotted or argued or whined about this, but the mandate was reversed and we became the final class to sing Jingle Bell Rock.
Every year ended with the whole school singing Silent Night, with the lights dimmed, while the fifth graders lined the aisles with battery-powered candles. Now that my life no longer contains an annual holiday concert, I've moved on to an annual trip down NSYNC holiday memory lane.
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