Tag Archives: Christmas songs

2021 “Uketide” Tunes – Part I

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The band is back together! Aria joins me for a little fun with Puerto Rican singer Jose Feliciano’s macaronic Christmas pop song, Feliz Navidad, from 1970. It continues to receive an enormous amount of radio airplay during the holiday season and is one of the top 25 most played Christmas songs in the world. Not bad for something he wrote in 10 minutes that only has 19 words.

Strange how our version isn’t on any radio playlists, but it’s a good start to our holiday music season, nonetheless:

On the way is another collaboration, featuring a Wham song that has been covered many times and is a Christmas staple.

2020 “Uketide” Tunes – Part IV

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After a fun debut, Aria joins me again for the grand finale of our Yuletide ukulele series, Robert Alex Anderson’s Mele Kalikimaka. There is a twist, however! For fun, I rewrote the lyrics for one verse and changed the song title to Rainy Kalikimaka, which is typical weather for Christmas in Oregon. For the record, it’s in the forecast this year.

Here are the revamped lyrics:

Rainy Kalikimaka is the thing to say
On a wet and stormy Christmas day
That’s the Northwest greeting that we send to you
From the land where Doug firs sway
Here we know that Christmas will be gray and cold
Some years we may get snow but that gets quickly old
Rainy Kalikimaka is the Northwest way
To say Merry Christmas to you

Hope you get a few laughs from this. Listening to me try to hit those higher notes is definitely giggle-worthy. I need to work on transposing! That said, we enjoyed making the video:

Mahalo for watching us do songs for a third year in a row. May you have enough malasadas and shave ice to satisfy your sweet tooth…and spike your blood sugar. Ha! Mele Kalikimaka and best wishes this holiday season!

2020 “Uketide” Tunes – Part III

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Santa has done his musical thing, and now Aria joins me for a song she picked. (There’s No Place Like) Home for the Holidays was written by Robert Allen and Al Stillman. Perry Como recorded the song in 1954 and again in stereo in 1959, but the iconic version of this Christmas favorite was released by the Carpenters in 1984.

While a lot of us won’t be going home for the holidays this year…or will be relegated to the house for the duration, we hope this brings a smile to your face. Questionable singing and all:

Our traditional holiday send-off video is still to come next week — with a twist!