It looks like there may be a shortage of Xmas trees in our area for this year due to a number of factors including weather. Of course, that means that families may be scrambling like crazy to get that pine tree in their home by next Monday...i.e. Christmas Eve. My family basically gave up on lugging in a natural tree decades ago when I was a kid since cleaning up the needles wasn't a particularly fun post-Xmas activity for some reason.
Nah...instead for some years after, we relied on that plastic variety of tree to bring in the mood of the Yuletide. Maybe that fragrant scent of pine was no longer in the household but at least we didn't have to scoop up half of the tree into the garbage bag come New Year's.
That brings us to the song of this article tonight, "Hokori Darake no Christmas Tree" (Dusty Christmas Tree) by singer-songwriter Ginji Ito（伊藤銀次）as his contribution to the November 1983 Xmas-themed compilation album "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" from Alfa Records. The arrangement, also by Ito, is as Christmas-y as a department store Santa or those cookies and milk for St. Nick when he comes down the chimney. I mean, if I ever had a grand Christmas party at my place, I would be putting this on the stereo as my friends were downing nog and trimming the tree. And yup, whenever we opened up that plastic tree from the box, Mom would be grumbling about how dusty it was.
The album itself was produced by a couple of brothers, Yukihiro Takahashi（高橋幸宏）of Yellow Magic Orchestra fame along with his older brother, music producer Nobuyuki（高橋信之）. "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" managed to peak at No. 57 on Oricon.
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