2022: That's a wrap!

It's time to wind down another Christmas season here at Merry & Bright.  It felt like a good year - some pretty good shares, a great interview with Laurie Berkner, a fun Q&A with Jessy J, some awesome new music to feature, and a lot of new songs to round up and get the word out about.  

Christmas here in Kansas City was a White Christmas.  Although we didn't get fluffy, new Christmas Eve snow, the ground was still covered with the snow from the preceding Thursday, as we went into a major deep freeze following the snow, so there was no melting.  It's tough to melt with a high of -2.  As my son put it, it was a perfect white Christmas - snow on the ground but the road were clear.

Kansas City White Christmas 2022, 7:00AM

Christmas Day in our household brought all five of our children, their spouses/significant others, and the new granddaughter.  For gift exchange, with a couple exceptions, we always open one gift at a time, so that everyone can enjoy what everyone else is opening.  (Having done the crazed giftageddon of simultaneous opening before, I never want to do it again).  So, gift opening took a solid two hours, after which we had over-proofed dinner rolls and ham a bit on the dry side, but dinner was till awesome.  

One of the exceptions to the one-gift-at-a-time process is the opening of the Beverage Santa gifts.  A few years ago Beverage Santa began leaving a beverage for each child under the vintage aluminum tree.  These are distributed and opened all at once.  This year, Beverage Krampus also made a stop and left each child and spouse/SO a wrapped can of Fruitquake Mountain Dew (fruitcake flavored soda).  

One of our many Christmas trees

So, after snacks, gifts, dinner, dessert, and beverages, it was a wonderful and joyous Christmas!

As I wrap things up here, I'll make one final shout out to some of the amazing independent artists that sent me their music this year.  Please seek out these musicians via their internet presences and support them however you can - buy their music, add their songs to your streaming playlists, spread the word about them to your like-minded friends.  So here's to Cristina F, Carol Crittenden, Mackenna Swann, Jason Beers, Lee Langdon, Ren Geisick, Sofia Talvik, Jessy J, and Laurie Berkner.

I'll be back next season, and have a couple ideas brewing already.  Hope to see you all here too!  Have a prosperous 2023!

Aaron Henton (Der Bingle)