Barry Manilow, Robert Goulet, and The Secret, Lurking, Unknown Present I Found on My TV

It’s Christmastime and I love to listen to Christmas music, and I have about 5 old cassette tapes I always pop into my decrepit tape player I bought at a yard sale a couple of years ago for this express purpose. It’s great to listen to The St. Michael’s Boys Choir, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the Nutcracker, Barry Manilow (courtesy of my friend Amanda, whose awesome craft blog is here. She’s amazing.), The Preston High School A Capella Choir, circa 1989 (featuring my younger sister and her friends and the songs they sang behind the newly fallen Iron Curtain in Prague and Warsaw, which is an amazing other story for another day), and Robert Goulet (also courtesy of Amanda.)

Lots of great memories, great feelings from Christmas music.

So I was at my other friend Louise’s house yesterday morning and she had me listen to a couple of new favorite Christmas songs she’s discovered lately by a Christian artist named Bebe Norman. Louise admittedly loved “weird” Christmas songs, and these aren’t weird, but they definitely come at the story from a different angle. I loved them!

Which made me think: are there a lot of other Christmas songs I’m missing out on? How would I possibly find out (without wasting YET more time on the internet. I mean, seriously, there are only so many hours in a day to waste online, and I’ve got them booked up with social networking)?

It hit me: Pandora. I’ve had an account for a couple of years but only used it once to find a Michael Bublé song. Since then I haven’t even launched it—mostly because I was *sure* I’d forgotten my password. But I have this Pandora Channel on our Roku box (which, honestly, was the best entertainment purchase we have ever made, hands down), and so I went onto the internet (without even checking my email, be proud of me) and logged onto Pandora.

WEIRD. I was still logged in. After all the multiple system crashes since I first signed up like two years ago. And I set it up on my Roku so it plays through my TV and everything. And I set up “Traditional Christmas Radio” and a few other stations, and now as I make my first of many batches of Grandma Sybil’s best rolls, I have been listening to a bunch of songs that were there waiting on my system all this time.

But it hit me, I’ve had this sitting here waiting for me and never used it. I could’ve been motivating my kids to clean house to the Beach Boys or some kind of showtunes, and I never bothered to even launch it.

It reminded me of this phrase we hear in church pretty often, that we as women need to “live up to our privileges.” I hadn’t been living up to my privilege, something that was free to me because of what I’d already bought, and all I needed to do was tap into it. Meanwhile, it made me think am I living up to my spiritual privileges. Are there things I’m missing out on, things that have already been bought and paid for on my behalf and I’m not taking full advantage of the joy and peace and well-being and enjoyment that are waiting for me if I would simply…tune in. Like, promptings of the Spirit, chances to serve and be blessed, learning or understanding from the scriptures, the peace that comes through repentance and being forgiven—the ultimate gift and privilege that has been bought and paid for for me by the Savior Jesus Christ.

It’s Christmas. I’m going to work a little more on accepting the free gifts, and do better at living up to my privileges as a daughter of God.