Christmas shows help make season enjoyable

With unemployment rising and investments disappearing all over, this is an unusually anxious Christmas season.

As the fruits of greed and recklessness become more apparent, anxiety might increase, but there have been Decembers when we felt worse.

The early Depression years are a bit outside my memory, but a couple of other years burn in my memory.

Christmas 1941 came 18 days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The losses of Dec. 7 and arrival of war made for a somber holiday.

Young men and teenagers faced a probable trip to war, and for their parents, their youngsters’ prospects of going to war perhaps was more frightening. We weren’t even sure it would be “going off to war.” The West Coast might be in danger of invasion, we thought.
Then, there was 1963. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated that Nov. 22, and when Christmas followed, most of us were still in a state of shock and depression.
I remembered feeling that nothing would ever be quite right again. Come to think of it, I’m not sure things have quite been right again, but that is a worry for another day. It sure toned down Christmas that year.
But we got past those things, and we will get past today’s problems, too.

Despite the economy trying to intrude on the joy, I was thinking last night about the last couple of weeks in Florence and how much there has been to enjoy — and we did not come close to going to everything.

First was Florence Little Theatre’s production of “Plaid Tidings.” FLT-goers remember “Forever Plaid,” a show about a quartet that met an unfortunate end in a traffic accident but by some miracle returned to play a big date at FLT. It once was an off-Broadway show.

“Plaid Tidings” is a sequel and holiday show in which the quartet miraculously returns again to do a Christmas show. The FLT quartet of (we’ll do this alphabetically) David Boyd, Kevin Carter, Frankie Sullivan and Shaw Thompson did the kind of quartet harmony that was familiar to pops audiences some decades ago.

The four do Christmas songs among other things and make an extremely good group, something appreciated by those of us in the audience who were a little older and remember the great pop quartets. It was another successful show during the theater’s first season in its new building that still draws “wows” when people walk in. Arlene Boyd directed.

Another night we were at the Florence Symphony Orchestra’s Christmas concert at the Florence Civic Center. It was another of their fine performances under conductor Terry Roberts. FSO has been around since 1949, so by my count that makes this its 60th season.

They do pretty well at their makeshift quarters at the Civic Center, but the day is drawing nearer when they will have a genuine concert hall to play in. Groundbreaking should be soon for the new Francis Marion University performing arts building downtown, and in a couple of seasons, FSO should be there.

At St. Luke Lutheran Church the other night, we heard the Christmas performance by the still-new Florence Men’s Choral Society, which it seems to me gets better each performance. They are adding voices and expect in a concert or two to have a bigger sound, but for now the sound is fine.

An exception on the men’s program was Xin Jie. She did “O Holy Night,” a highlight of the evening for Julian Young’s group.

Masterworks Choir, as usual, was masterful in its Christmas program at Central Methodist Church. My wife didn’t go to that with me because she was in Bill Mills’ choir. It was a lighter program than usual.

Then there were a couple of performances of “Messiah” by the combined choirs of First Presbyterian Church and the Lake City Baptist Church. They did it twice, once at First Prez and once in Lake City.
That was not all. I viewed local artists’ work in the old Waters Furniture Co. (or Kimbrell’s, if you insist) store. There were paintings, photographs, sculptures that reminded me of my dream — a real art museum here.

Hearing people say there is little to do here blows my mind. And we missed several other things.

Finally, I noticed a bumper sticker the other day. It read: “Commit Random Acts of Kindness and Senseless Beauty.”

I like that.

— Thom Anderson is a retired journalist who has 40 years experience with South Carolina newspapers, including the Morning News. He can be reached at THIDBIT@aol.com.