{"id":52,"date":"2007-12-26T13:55:46","date_gmt":"2007-12-26T20:55:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ukuleletonya.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/my-christmas-and-ukuleles"},"modified":"2009-07-23T08:29:11","modified_gmt":"2009-07-23T15:29:11","slug":"my-christmas-and-ukuleles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ukuleletonya.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/my-christmas-and-ukuleles","title":{"rendered":"My Christmas and Ukuleles"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"There were no ukuleles waiting under the Christmas tree for me yesterday morning (since I hadn’t asked Santa for any there were no surprises there), but there were<\/span> three delightful ukulele ornaments from Santa Claus on the piney boughs to delight me.<\/p>\n

Perched on a sturdy branch (sturdy because this is one is hefty in weight) is a resin ornament featuring a barefoot Santa playing an ukulele. The chord he’s playing isn’t like any I’ve seen before (picture an A string with fingers down on the third, fourth, fifth and sixth frets—I guess he’s playing an Eb single note really) but he’s blissfully contented as he sits beneath a palm tree bedecked with a star (and a candy cane) and sitting beside a Hawaiian thatched-grass hut. Maker: Island Heritage<\/span>.<\/p>\n

The second ornament is blown glass and is a deep red four-string ukulele adorned with two palm trees (on front and back), ocean waves and details including strings and frets. The soundhole doubles as a “moon” making it appear as a night scene in the tropics. Maker: Island Heritage.<\/span><\/p>\n

The third ornament is my favorite yet—a lovely Hawaiian maiden strumming a four-string ukulele (another unknown chord shape). She wears a lovely white lei around her neck and is kneeling as she plays, her grass skirt swirling to her knees and her black wavy hair ornamented with a red silk rose. She’s a real sweetie! Maker: Island Heritage.<\/span>\"\"<\/p>\n

Christmas night found our family playing holiday music with great enthusiasm. Included in our family Christmas band was a bass, a djembe, a Salvation Army bell (Dad and I had volunteered for a two-hour shift on Christmas Eve day and they gave us each a bell as a “thank you”), a guitar, the piano and my little ukulele. We played and sang everything from “Little Drummer Boy” to “Silver Bells.” The traditional melodies were great but the most enthusiastically sung\/played\/received was our own inimitable (truly!) rendition of Robert Earl Keene’s “Christmas with the Family.”<\/span> Especially the chorus… The best moment of the evening for me was when our oldest son, Matt, looked over at me with no small amount of surprise on his face: “Mom, you’re really much better at playing ukulele. I’m impressed.” Since he moved with his wife to Ojai in Fall 2006 (an eight-hour drive away), we hadn’t played together much. Christmas night was our first time to jam together in months and months. Matthew leads worship at his church and plays a mean guitar so I was pretty pleased with his praise. Since it’s been a very long road getting to this point, I’m not too humble to share it here!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There were no ukuleles waiting under the Christmas tree for me yesterday morning (since I hadn’t asked Santa for any there were no surprises there), but there were three delightful ukulele ornaments from Santa Claus on the piney boughs to delight me. Perched on a sturdy branch (sturdy because this is one is hefty in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Wqkt-Q","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ukuleletonya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ukuleletonya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ukuleletonya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ukuleletonya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ukuleletonya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/ukuleletonya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94,"href":"http:\/\/ukuleletonya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions\/94"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ukuleletonya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ukuleletonya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ukuleletonya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}