Red socks serve as inspiration for new Christmas song
David Holborn and his wife Jackie were visiting friends in Ontario when he found the inspiration to write a Christmas song.
David had spent eight years as director of the VOJ Voices of Joy Community Choir in Newmarket.
There he had worked with Janice Stem, the choir’s pianist.
The Holborns, who moved to Nova Scotia four years ago and live in Cornwallis Park, were visiting the Stems last year. David recalls bending over to pick up a napkin and noticing that Tom Stem, Janice’s husband, and another man dining with them, were both wearing bright red socks.
Commenting on this, Holborn was asked if he had any of his own. He said no, which prompted Tom to get up from the table and retrieve a box full of them.
“He gave me a pair and told me he only wears red wool socks, buys them by the case and gives them to all his friends and employees,” Holborn said. “When we returned home to Nova Scotia, I was able to take this fact and incorporate it into a story about the origin of the colour of Santa’s suit.”
He turned it into a Christmas song called Put Your Red Socks On, whose chorus ends with the line, “It always feels like Christmas when you put your red socks on.”
Among other things, the lyrics speak of the birth of the tradition of hanging up Christmas stockings.
The first public performance of the song was scheduled for Nov.
24 at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Digby, where the Fundy Chorale women’s choir would sing the song at their Christmas concert. The plan was that the group’s members would sing it while each wearing a pair of red socks strung up like a necklace, Holborn said.
“When we dropped in to see (the Stems) again this past Thanksgiving, Tom sent me home with more than two dozen pairs for the Fundy Chorale concert,” he said.
Two weeks after the Fundy Chorale event, the song is slated to be performed in Newmarket by the VOJ Voices of Joy Community Choir.