WMFE "Christmas in the Park" hosted by....me!

It’s chilly, not really cold enough for the bright scarlet, impossibly 80’s sweater I’m wearing (puff sleeves and shoulder pads), but atmosphere is important. This may be Florida but if you can’t wear a red angora sweater to a Christmas concert why own one? Some people hug their jackets around them, some, not yet acclimated, run around in shorts, but they’re here by the hundreds for Christmas in the Park, a concert of  holiday favorites by the Bach Festival Choir Youth Choir and Brass Ensemble and a showcase for the famous windows of world renown glass maker Louis Comfort Tiffany from the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of Fine Art. I’m hosting the event on WMFE, 90.7 FM, Central Florida’s public radio station - the first time Christmas in the Park as been broadcast - with interviews with Dr. John V, Sinclair, director and conductor of the Bach Festival Society and Dr. Laurence Ruggiero, executive director of the Morse Museum (click here tonight at 6pm to listen and here to find a schedule of upcoming broadcasts).

There are a lot of reasons I’m beaming with happiness at being part of this broadcast, mostly capturing it like this is the next best thing to being there and being there was pretty spectacular. The park felt like the kind of warm holiday sing-a-long party people think only happens on TV specials. Any seasonal qualms (religious issues, commercialism) have been firmly locked in the baggage department and there there was nothing left but to bask in the the unfettered spirit of beauty and joy, helped by Dr. Sinclair who encouraged the audience participation in the forms of jingling keys and lit-up cel phones resembling holiday lights. From We Wish You A Merry Christmas, to the Hallelujah Chorus, it was all there.

And all set off by those remarkable Tiffany windows, priceless works of art set outdoors for everyone to see.

Imagine taking your own irreplaceable treasures - family heirlooms, tokens of love or pricey gifts - and sticking them out in a public park at night so a concert-going crowd could have a look. Even if they had a guard, very idea might make some of us hold our preciouses a little closer, Golllum-like,, not trusting them to the safety or scrutiny of all and sundry.  

Hugh F. and Jeanette Genius McKean, (pronounced McKANE)  didn’t feel that way. These great benefactors of the arts (the WMFE building is named after Hugh McKean) acquired the world’s most comprehensive collection of the works of Louis Comfort Tiffany (son of the founder of Tiffany jewelers) and often did it through search and rescue missions. The collection now resides  two blocks from the park in the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art, fouded by Jeanette and named after her grandfatther.  But once a year, beginning in 1979, the McKeans decided to bring some of these invaluable pieces right out to the people who couldn’t or wouldn’t otherwise get to see them. On the first Thursday of each December, nine Tiffany windows (eight of which were rescued from the spectacularly named Association for the Relief of Respectable Aged Indigent Females in New York) are brought out to public view, eight in Central Park and one in the Morse museum, just down the street.

Paired with the soaring music Bach Festival musicians and vocalists, the event is now it’s 34th year and is an inspiring gift. When times are tough, as they have been for all of us lately, one doesn’t always feel moved to share. This event, which grants us a moment of awe therapy, fosters the feeling of having been given something to appreciate and wanting to pass the feeling on. For all the art treasures the McKean legacy has given us one possibly overlooked one is the reminder that there are people like them - whose goal was to make people happy - and that we have the option in our own way to be people like them, too.

So yes, I like being on the radio, I like Christmas songs and I like wearing weather-inappropriate get-ups if they create atmosphere. But the chance to channel the open spirit that made Christmas in the Park a unique reality is the biggest reason I’m happy to share this event in the heart of the town I grew up in. You can listen here on 

* Sunday December 9 6pm-8pm     WMFE

* Friday December 21 7pm-9pm HD-2

* Monday December 24 8pm-10pm WMFE

* Tuesday December 25 10am-12pm HD-2

* Sunday December 30 6pm-8pm WMFE. 

I hope it becomes a happy part of your own holidays.