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Near 50F with heavy rain and wind. It doesn’t feel or look much like Christmas outside, but that isn’t the case inside, not with lighted trees, candles in the windows, gifts under the tree and stockings hung by the staircase with care • Ironically there was more snow on the ground in Dallas, Texas in 1961 than here in Maine, 2022 • Here we go with our #3 Christmas Song: A Holly Jolly Christmas by Johnny Marks, 1962. If you’ve been paying attention you’ll know this song is Johnny’s 3rd in the Top 25 List • It was first recorded by The Quinto Sisters, ranging in ages from 6-14, in 1964. The six sisters performed at Nursing Homes and Fundraisers before appearing on network TV in the 1960s with Mitch Miller, Jimmy Dean and Jimmy Mack • Also in 1964 the song was featured in the TV Christmas Special, Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer. Burl Ives voiced the narrator, Sam the Snowman, and sang this song, along with Silver and Gold, also written by Marks • Burl Ives included a slower version in his own Holiday Album in 1965, which proved to be the most well known and most successful • The record company never told The Quinto Sisters about Rudolph or Burl Ives. Not that they had to but the sisters were disappointed in how it was handled • Ives was born to English-Irish tenant farmers in Illinois, and died in 1995 at 85 from complications of mouth cancer • Have a Holly Jolly Day!