The Writer's Room

“Christmas Time’s A-Comin’” says the granddaddy of Bluegrass holiday songs. And it seems to be a-comin’ sooner each year.

As I write this, the first carol hasn’t fa-la-la-ed on the radio. But stores already have hauled out the holly, trimmed the trees, and tempted us with seasonal samples of fruitcake and candy.

That’s put me in the mood to track down stories behind a few of my favorite Bluegrass Christmas songs. I once thought some of the more familiar tunes could be traced back to frontier days, but

many were created in the mid-20^th century.

“Christmas Time’s A-Comin,’” originally recorded by Bill Monroe in 1951, was written by Benjamin “Tex” Logan, a Texas fiddler with a side gig at Bell Labs. That’s “Doctor Logan,” who earned his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Columbia University and did research in digital audio. I’m relieved that his level of “day job” achievement isn’t a requirement to be a Yuletide tunesmith.

Another favorite Christmas song is “Beautiful Star of Bethlehem.” Surely the Wise Men were humming that one on their way to the manger! Nope, again it’s a 20^th century creation—with a barn rather than a stable in its backstory.

Robert Fisher Boyce, a Middle Tennessee dairy farmer, was also a songwriter and shape-note singer. A house full of children wasn’t the best place to concentrate, so he headed to his barn to write “Beautiful Star” in 1938. The Stanley Brothers were the first to record what’s still one of the most popular Bluegrass carols.

Stories Old and New

The holiday season is a time for memories of home and family. Bluegrass Hall of Fame writer Paul Williams put a lot of those images into “Old Fashioned Christmas.” He told me that he’d just gotten out of the service in 1957 when Jimmy Martin invited him to spend Christmas with the Martin family in Sneedville, Tennessee.

After the holidays, on a snowy car ride to Detroit, Paul wrote what became his first song as a member of Jimmy Martin and the Sunny Mountain Boys. Joe Mullens and the Radio Ramblers released their own version in 2022, featuring Paul Williams doing the recitation.

The Nativity naturally inspires memorable songs of the season. Donna Ulisse released “All The Way To Bethlehem” in 2012, a concept album that’s led to annual live performances across the country. She and husband Rick Stanley and other co-writers created each song from the viewpoint of a different character in the Christmas story.

Donna says her favorite is probably the title cut, a conversation between Mary and Joseph that Donna wrote with Kerry and Lynn Chater. During the nine days of a brutal trip on the back of a donkey, Donna says, Mary’s faith never wavered that they’d make it “All The Way to Bethlehem.”

What’s going on in songwriters’ lives can put a personal stamp on even the most familiar story. In a writing session with Sue C. Smith and Lee Black, Jerry Salley mentioned to his co-writers that his daughter was expecting her first child.

The writers then focused on other parents who were preparing to welcome a newborn more than 2000 years ago. The song “Getting Ready for a Baby” was recorded by the Oak Ridge Boys in 2012 and by Bluegrass group Volume Five as well as Jerry Salley.

War and Peace on Earth

Some of the most moving Christmas tunes contrast happy holiday memories with wartime loneliness and hardship. That explains why “I’ll Be Home For Christmas,” recorded in 1943 by Bing Crosby, was the most requested song at USO shows in World War II. It remains a standard that’s been covered by many Bluegrass artists.

Bluegrass writers also have tapped into the theme of conflict in what’s meant to be the season of peace on earth. In Tony Trischka’s “Christmas Cheer (This Weary Year”), Civil War soldiers try to keep the spirit alive during a break in the fighting. There are games, better rations, and even a stocking gift for the drummer boy.

But soon, “a battle looms, the war resumes.” It’s a reminder that “Christmas cheer this weary year’s not like the last, you know. But hopefully by next we’ll be united with our families back home.”

Paula Breedlove and Mark “Brink” Brinkman look at the same war through civilian eyes in “Christmas in Savannah,” recorded by Dale Ann Bradley. At the end of Sherman’s March to the Sea in 1864, the Union General tells President Lincoln that he’s “presenting as a Christmas gift the City of Savannah.”

Understandably, starving local citizens weren’t in a festive mood. The siege had cut off supplies to the war-torn town until “Yankee Santas” from Michigan “came round with food and fresh provisions on wagons that were pulled . . . by little Christmas reindeer that looked a lot like mules.”

At an IBMA song circle, I heard Dawn Kenney and David Morris sing their “Bells of Home,” which was recorded by the group Circa Blue. This new-to-me song is set “somewhere in Belgium” during World War II.

On a snowy Christmas Eve during the Battle of the Bulge, a soldier dreams of holidays spent with family. Though he believes “some things are worth fighting for . . . like every soldier in this foxhole tonight, I miss the Bells of Home.”

That song connects with me because it could have been the story of my father-in-law, Bill Scarbrough, who fought in that battle. Not long after, he was badly wounded and triaged with the dead. Then a passing medic noticed some slight movement and saved his life. I’d like to think that Tennessee farm boy soldier was called back by the Bells of Home.