On Christmas morning, I was thinking about something I never got to see. My dad died in 2011; I wrote about it at the time on CBR and have written about him here. After they moved to Virginia, my parents found a local church that they liked. As many churches do, they had an annual Christmas musical service in which they acted out the story, including having the three wise men approach the manger singing "We Three Kings of Orient Are". My dad had a fine singing voice, but wasn't walking very well at that point. There were men in the congregation who were willing to wear the costume and walk up to the manger, but they didn't want to sing. So, Dad stood in the back of the church and sang "We Three Kings" while the men in costume walked silently to the manger. I live in Oregon and never visited them during December, so I never got to see this performance.

As I was thinking about that, I turned on the kitchen radio, which is tuned to the local jazz station. Guess what song was playing?



Merry Christmas, Dad.