Keith at Santa's Workshop -- 4, 8, 11, 18, 21, 22 Dec2013

I don't usually combine gigs into one blog post, but I had so many of these, so close together, that I just didn't have time to write 'em up individually. Not to mention that they all blur together in my head.

I emailed the lady in charge just before the first one to remind her to remind whoever was going to be setting up the line ropes to put 'em in the right place. And as expected, they didn't. But the guy was willing to push the 50 earlybirds out or line and re-route the ropes for me while I set up the equipment, so it worked out OK.

I almost always had little kids come up and start talking to me even before I was set up. They were ready to go way before I was. My biggest fan on that first night was Lilybelle, who made lots of cutely but entirely unintelligible song requests due to her spectacularly random assortment of in, out, and half-back teeth.

I started these gigs with an assortment of toy tambourines, jingle bells, and egg shakers. But the shakers tend to disappear, so I quit that pretty soon, and after a few gigs I realized that the tambourines were way louder or more piercing than the jingle bells, so I discontinued bringing them out, too.

Obviously, I get a lot of kids at this gig, so there's no way I can give away fingerlights to any of them. So I thought of another idea. I bought a bunch of jingle bells and some thin ribbon, and tied them up so the kids can hold the ribbon to "play" them, or put it on their wrist to keep from losing it. Or at least not lose it so soon...

Unfortunately, I couldn't think of a way to have them handy except to put them in my pocket, and after fetching out a half-dozen, the rest were a complete tangle. And since the cheapest bells I could find were "assorted colors", I had to hassle of kids wanting to trade the one they'd gotten for a different color, and it just got way out of hand. So that only happened one night.

This year, I made a combined songbook for the iPad that has all my Christmas songs, and also the best of the Kids' song list. Makes it easier to mix it up when I start to run out of kid-friendly Christmas songs. There are really only about 5 that most kids are familiar with. Doesn't seem to bother them, though -- I frequently get loud requests for "Jingle Bells", even when I literally just finished playing it.

Last year a guy come by with his kids and a nice camera and took some great shots of me, and actually emailed me a link to go fetch them. This year, there he was again. See you next year, buddy!

Another repeat visitor was a little girl who told me "I saw you here last year. Last year I was only 5 -- guess how old I am this year!" She reminded me of Geneva at that age, totally confident and bold. She had learned a dance to "Feliz Navidad" at school, and was perfectly willing to do it for me while I played.

Several of the kids know the set of hand motions that go along with "Up On the Housetop", so that's fun. And one little girl did the hula while I played "Mele Kalikimaka".

The only downside to the setup is that, unlike Spectrum, when the kids come up, their parents may be quite a ways away. This allows for some occasional pretty bad behavior that I can't really stop, since my hands and mouth tend to be busy. It's usually the little boys. They tend to decide that the jingle bell tambourines are too quiet, so they bang them on the benches or they get two and bang them together, which ends up breaking them.

One little boy decided to toss a jingle tambourine into the air. Each toss was higher and wilder than the one before it, until he was liable to lose it in a bush, or mow another little kid down in pursuing it. And one little boy decided he needed to get the glow-ball that sits at the bottom of my tip jar, so he was determinedly digging away through the money.

But overall the kids are sweet, and it's so great to get a chance to interact with little kids again. Now that mine are all grown up, I miss it.