Joseph Ebbecke, one of my 3.6 Loyal Readers, asked me a few days ago:

Gonna do a 12 days of Christmas this year? I really enjoyed all the you tubes you posted a year or two ago.

I greatly enjoyed doing that in 2011 (though in fact I did only eleven days, missing Christmas Day itself). People nowadays are altogether too liable to confuse the commercial hurly-burly of the weeks before Christmas with Christmas itself, and to suppose that the holiday is over as soon as the hugely excessive dinner gets cold on December 25. But by long and still living tradition, Christmas Day is in fact the first of the Twelve Days of Christmas; and for that reason among others, my own celebration of the holyday is just getting into full swing when other people are putting it behind them and getting on with the grim business of slogging through the winter.

This year I should like to start with one of the most famous conductors who ever lived, Leopold Stokowski; one of the greatest composers, Johann Sebastian Bach; and one of the best pieces of music ever written, which in English is known as ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’.

Merry Christmas to all.