Jeff’s Favorite Things

My Favorite Things, from The Sound of Music, seems to be a popular Christmas song… and I don’t know why. I sang it with Celia’s Yuletide Express, it was included in a Christmas song book I bought from Midwest Sheet Music, and so I learned it to perform at the Delta Gamma Center holiday party.

I have to admit that before this year I’d never seen the movie. I love music; I love movies; I dislike musicals. The moral of The Sound of Music seems to be: music good, Nazis bad. While this is an excellent moral to have, I was still confused about the song’s connection to Christmas. The lyrics include “sleigh bells” and “snowflakes” and “silver white winters”, but finding “raindrops on roses” on a Christmas day seems highly unlikely. And while “bright copper kettles” and “schnitzel with noodles” may be appealing to a 1930s Austrian baroness/nun, they would certainly not make my list of favorite things. I did enjoy the scene where Maria first sings My Favorite Things to the Von Trapp Children to comfort them during a thunderstorm. And when she asks the children to share their favorite things… that gave me an idea!

What would my favorite things be? I kept the melody, the rhyme scheme, and a few of the lyrics and replaced the rest of the words with my favorite things. (It didn’t feel finished after three verses, so I added two more.) I’m hoping this will be an easy introduction into the world of songwriting for some of the kids I work with. What will their favorite things be? It may serve as a means of self expression, an activity that lets us get to know each other better, or (as in the film) a coping strategy to be used in times of distress.

So… here are a few of Jeff’s favorite things.

Merry Christmas?