There are few places where ugly holiday sweaters, fountains, city lights, free fun, and festive seasonal singing come together in the way that all of those components come together at Music Center Plaza each year.
It's a heady, holly-festooned concoction, and one that works, time and again. Why? Because while some of us might be able to croon along to disco, or R&B, or the American songbook, or '80s ballads, most of all of us have the words to "The Christmas Song" and "Jingle Bells" stored deep within our DNA.
Grocery stores and malls and TV specials have made this so, but count our general and widespread love of carols as the main reason that we almost don't need lyric sheets to join in the yearly Music Center Holiday Sing-Along.
Thank your lucky chestnuts, though, that lyric sheets are provided, should you forget the line that goes "we'll conspire, by the fire." (Nope, it is not "we'll perspire, by the fire," no matter how often you tell yourself it is.)
The Holiday Sing-Along, like all Music Center everyone-warble-together-now events, is on a Friday. It's Friday, Dec. 19, to be specific, and the weather says that your garish Christmas sweater, the one you'll surely don, won't simply be for looks: You'll need it, because temperatures will be perfectly brisk and perfectly perfect for inspiring that crisp Christmas cheer.
The time? It's 6:30, so get out of the office in an expedient manner, and don't forget the Santa hat you keep stowed in your desk. Tickets will be handed out starting at 6, and even though it is free, you will need a ticket (and you can only get a ticket for yourself, so tell your pals not to dally.)
Will there be live music to give your singing voice oomph? Please. This is the Music Center. It's got "Music" in the first part of its name, for a reason.
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Call this sing-along, and all Music Center sing-alongs, part of the SoCal cultural canon. This one, though, has some extra zest, and stand-alone-a-tude, as it happens outside of the usual calendar of sing-along happenings.
Pretty cheerful and rare, for sure. You can make it, merrymaker.
