Lighting on the Green

Last night saw us head out to Lipscomb University's 10th annual Lighting on the Green. It started as a Christmas Tree lighting ceremony with a bit of caroling on the side, but Amy Grant, who hosts the event, has morphed it over the years into something much bigger. I must confess, when I was a kid I listened to Amy Grant. I had her tapes. I was into Christian Music at the time, so how could I not really? Event as an adult it's been impossible to avoid hearing one of her holiday albums playing somewhere this time of year. Not that I mind really. It's nice to have some ties to the past despite my usual phoenixlike proclivities. Grant announced during the concert that she's now a grandmother. Oh, and Cara is the owner of several of those holiday albums I mentioned earlier. Seeing Amy Grant perform her Christmas music live was somewhere on her bucket list. Accompanying us yestereve were the usual suspects, Maxwell and Zara, who brought along reinforcements in the form of their neighborhood friend Isaiah, who goes by Zay and plays trumpet in the middle school band alongside Maxwell's saxophone. This year several days of rain preceded the event, so they opted to hold it inside Allen Arena instead. So there was no green and there was nothing really being lit either. The event was still free though, and there were students in Victorian attire handing out free hot chocolate and cookies outside. The kids opted for Chick-fil-a from the food court however. And so we sat in the arena munching out dinner and listening to various acts perform holiday themed music. Each act performed two songs, and every so often Grant would perform a couple of her own as well. The event itself wasn't overtly religious, but the songs mentioning Jesus were the ones that got the audience standing. Personally, my favorite act was a group of kids called The Willis Clan who played a variety of instruments, including bagpipes for an Irish Christmas Ballad they performed. They also did a version of Rogers & Hammerstein's Favorite Things that was spectacular. Sadly it's not on any of their studio albums so it's not on Spotify.