Sledding/Sled/Sleigh

"And our next number, made famous by Guy Lombardo and his orchestra in 1934, is our rendition of Winter Wonderland."

The two colonels sat next to one another in the rec hall, watching the first of three performances of the camp's Christmas variety show. Klink leaned over to Hogan and whispered, "I really enjoy this song."

"I do too."

"I love a lot of your Christmas music," Klink replied. "Even though we are…ahem…not allowed to recognize the artists and composers."

"I appreciate that, sir."

Klink acknowledged Hogan's statement with a nod. Then he, along with the colonel, instinctively kept time.


Both Hogan and Klink are musicians in their own right; albeit, Hogan is portrayed as infinitely better than Klink. Even I often keep time, and I have no rhythm, nor the ability to carry a tune. (Werner Klemperer was actually an accomplished musician. His father, Otto, was a German-born conductor and composer.)

This song (my favorite song of the season) immediately popped into my head when I saw the prompt. The first line is "Sleigh bells ring, are you listening." The song was written in 1934 by Felix Bernard. The lyricist was Richard Bernhard Smith.

The history of this song can be found at christmassongsdotnet

for more information on songs of the season (which I came across while conducting research for several of these chapters) see:

live . stanford . edu / blog / december-2017 / jews-who-wrote-christmas

And I also discovered this documentary from Canadian television:

www . cbc . ca /documentarychannel / docs / dreaming-of-a-jewish-christmas