Grodie Greenies

This morning as I passed through the BART station on my way to work I heard the familiar refrain of a Christmas carol. I think it was O Come, All Ye Faithful. The odd thing was that it was coming from a solo flute. Not the instrument you would normally think of when considering buskers in BART. A folk guitar with suspect vocals, an oddly voiced Chinese stringed instrument, occasionally a string trio, sure, but a flute? Not usually.

It made me reminisce a bit about the little green books our band director would pass out before the holidays: Christmas carols. We always played some in our December concert for a carol sing-a-long with the audience. We groaned and complained about them. They were not our favorite pieces, that's for sure. Thus our not-so-affectionate name for those books: the Grodie Greenies.