Happy Holidays!
Welcome to our Christmas Card site. If you are here, you probably know some of what this is already. In 2024, I decided to use our Christmas card as a creative outlet. It was extremely fun for me and the feedback was that it was amusing for some of everyone else. The only constructive criticism I received was that a few friends were hoping that scanning the mock album cover would have uncovered more content. So, with that in mind, I've decided to both continue the new tradition of album cover inspired Christmas cards, and expand on the scope of the creative project by including all of the content below.
For the music fans out there, you may have already figured out that the inspiration of our 2025 holiday card is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, albums ever produced: the 1977 Fleetwood Mac album, Rumours.
There are more explanations as to why Rumours, as well as some easter eggs, to be found on the card and in the album liner notes below. But in short, this year... and therefore this holiday card and playlist... had themes of nostalgia, reimagining old classics, and British/American collaborations.
I hope it puts even just the faintest of smiles on your face since it made me smile making it.
If we don't currently exchange cards, and you'd like to. Please know that I'm always looking to keep in touch and there is a place to do that at the bottom.
The Ralstons' 2025 Album Liner Notes
Track 1 - January - Angie MacMahon - Silver Springs - I am going to get into this playlist the same way we went into 2025, deliberately. The start of the year was quiet with school being busy for g and work being busy for me. With the administration signing an Executive Order proclaiming equity work to be "illegal," I spent most of January worried about the upcoming year. A lot of us who work in the non-profit sector have been on edge, and there were times that I slipped over that edge into genuine worry. Worry that making a mistake this year could be incredibly costly, which is what had me thinking about and taking us to a detour through Silver Springs.
When Fleetwood Mac was making Rumours, the band had recorded too many songs to fit on the album. Producer Ken Calliat felt that a ballad written by Stevie Nicks alone would never be as popular as songs written in collaboration with her former partner, Lindsey Buckingham. Nicks loved and fought for the song, and Calliat gave her the option to include it on the album, but with one caveat... the only song he was willing to cut to make room for it was the other ballad written by Nicks, Gold Dust Woman. The track was cut and the resentment that Nicks felt toward Fleetwood and Buckingham for not fighting for the song's inclusion is what led to the breakup of Fleetwood Mac. Silver Springs was only really revisited 20 years later when, in reunion, Fleetwood Mac performed it live for an anniversary concert. All of the betrayal and love and grief between Nicks and Buckingham flowed between the two on stage and the world rediscovered one of the greatest songs ever written.I may have started the year with reflection and caution, but something I always try to remember is that no matter what mistakes we make, we will never make a mistake as big as when Calliat left Silver Springs off Rumours. I have so much love and admiration for Nicks fighting for what was important to her and removing herself from the counsel of those that didn't believe in her.
In the theme of revisiting old classics in a new way, and because Angie MacMahon absolutely kills it, I have included her version of Silver Springs as the opener to this project.
Track 2 - February - Japanese House - Landslide - 2025 cannot be summed up solely with Stevie Nicks covers. But, I'm not going to make the mistake of cutting one simply because there is another one already on here. And having heard Stevie Nicks tell the story behind writing Landslide at Aspen Jazz Fest, a quiet and cold February brought the song to mind. Some of the free time I had during the month was spent reading. But much of it was spent developing a few of the new hobbies I've picked up in the last year or two. I spent many mornings at the climbing gym and many afternoons at the keyboard practicing my basic piano lessons while looking out on the Colorado mountains. Which is what Nicks was doing when she wrote Landslide... While she was living in Aspen, the songwriter had hurt herself skiing. So while her friends were hitting the slopes, she was sitting at her piano, gazing out on the Colorado mountains and writing this song.
The Japanese House's cover keeps to the British/American collaboration theme of this playlist and the sound of this version just exudes the feel of February.
Track 3 - March - Richard Ashcroft - Sonnet - No one hits our album theme harder than Richard Ashcroft. I was lucky to see the Verve frontman this year (more on that later) and the nostalgia hit me heavily. Hearing a middle aged man re-release a song about friendship and love, along with all of the implications of what they meant to him when he was a young man compared to what they mean to who he is now... I can relate. One of the things I learned about Ashcroft was that despite his prickly demeanor, he shows a huge amount of love for his friends. March allowed us to experience and express the same. After one failed attempt at flying to England, a 10 hour flight only to land back in Denver and a 36 hour delay, G and I spent her Spring Break in Bath and London. We had the chance to spend time with old British friends and we got to share our British life with our oldest American friends, playing tour guide at Mr B.'s and Bath Abbey and playing tourist at the Ritz, Cecil Court (London's street full of rare book sellers) and London's West End for a rousing showing of Mamma Mia! (I considered an ABBA song for our March soundtrack but considering how strict they are in licensing... who could afford it?).
Track 4 - April - Bess Atwell - Release Myself - Back to Colorado for April, both geographically and in that our lives in April could be described as "Very Colorado". G spent most of the month either at school, on horseback or joining me at the climbing gym. I spent my solitary weekends finding extremely long hikes around the Colorado Rockies, summitting a few peaks and chasing a few elk herds. The mood was soothing and introspective, and when I'm in that mood, I usually find myself listening to Bess Atwell.
Track 5 - May - Sia - Solisbury Hill - May had closure. G had been looking for more opportunities to expand her educational options and social scene as she was getting older, and just like I did 30 years ago, decided to leave the Colorado Springs School for Cheyenne Mountain Junior High. The end of the school year included a lot of reflection on the past years and opportunities for the future. One such opportunity was our finally being able to realize something that had been a dream since moving back to Colorado and which had been in the works for more than a year; closing on a property in Bath, giving us a footprint in another place that we love.Solisbury Hill is the rise just to the north of Bath and when Peter Gabriel wrote "Climbing up on Solisbury Hill, I could see the city lights..." I now think to myself: "Ah, one of those lights must be because we were home."Years ago, when I worked for the University of Bath, Gabriel was one of the people who had shown care and support for the University and I was assigned to look after the relationship with him. That "relationship" really only consisted of a phone call once a year... but I did always send him a holiday card... It's probably a good thing I didn't send him this one.
This version of his song, by Sia, was recorded to support Humane World for Animaks UK, an organization that supports ending the fur trade, stopping inhumane treatment of farm animals, and banning product animal testing. Those of you who know g well know that these are all things that are very close to her heart. I chose this version for her.
Track 6 - June - Leela James - A Change Is Gonna Come - 2025 was a big year for the Sachs Foundation. We brought on new staff, we signed up with new partners and we were awarded new grants we had never been awarded before. I am very proud of the team and the work that they have done in a year where working in racial equity was stressful, to say the least. The summer included a true celebration of all of their work. In June, we named a new class of scholars, celebrated our graduating high school students and recruited new educators, all of whom we honored at our annual celebration. This year, I was lucky to share the stage with writer Ta-Nehisi Coates. I have been a huge fan of Coates for a while now, not just because of his influential voice in America, but because I am also a nerd and in addition to his masterful non-fiction and fiction works of history and social justice, Coates wrote multiple comic book series for Black Panther and Captain America. After our meeting he was quickly added to the list of the 5 smartest people I've ever met in person... Which I now have to get re-laminated. Carrying this inspiration with me, I was able to start my summer in Bath visiting with a group of students comprised of Sachs Scholars and Fulbright Scholars who were attending a summer study program at the University of Bristol in Arts, Activism and Social Justice. The whole month had me thinking about our work and how lucky I am to get to do what I do.
Sam Cooke wrote A Change Is Gonna Come as a protest song after being turned away from a Holiday Inn in Louisiana when the clerk learned he was Black. Cooke argued with the clerk and was arrested for disturbing the peace. Cooke wrote most of the song while participating in sit-ins in North Carolina. The song has been a symbol of racial equity since it's release and the words "A Change Is Gonna Come" is written across the walls of the Smithsonian's Museum of African American History and Culture. Leela James' voice carrying the lyrics is enough to move anyone.
Track 7 - July - Fenne Lily - Dawncolored Horse - The fact that Sam Cooke wrote A Change Is Gonna Come while in North Carolina is a nice coincidence that transitions us into the July track as g spent the majority of her July in the Tar Heel state where she was born. The girl loves horses so much that we decided to go on a mission to find the best known horse camp in the country and it just happened to be a 10 minute drive from her maternal grandparents' house in Brevard, NC. She spent a few weeks doing all of the classic summer camp activities including spending almost every day on the back of a horse. I spent those same weeks exploring the outdoors in the Southwest of England, the birthplace of indie folk singer songwriter, Fenne Lilly. G would tell you that the Dawncolored Horse mentioned in the song was the Roan Mare she got to ride every day at camp, while I would tell you the aforementioned horse is the Westbury White Horse which was originally carved into the Salisbury plain during the Iron age, but was observed admiringly between bites of a cliff bar during the Ben age.
I will defer to g's interpretation since I did make a quick run from England to North Carolina for camp pickup and I did get to meet the dawncolored horse as she remembers it. I spent the morning walking the familiar paths of the Davidson College campus before grabbing the girl and heading back to England.
Track 8 - August - Oasis - Cast no Shadow - The close of the summer was bittersweet... and while it included a symphony of sorts... that's life. We experienced what felt like a major milestone as g took her first solo flight, and an international one at that, back to Colorado. I closed out the summer in England with the opportunity to attend what ended up being the musical highlight of the year: Oasis at Wembley. The unlikely reunion tour struck some deep emotional chords as 100k people belted out "SOOOOOO, SALLY CAN WAIT..." I appreciated how the Gallagher brothers made no excuses for their mercurial demeanor and sometimes surly attitudes, admitting that they are just a couple of middle aged "grumpy f*cks" that were reuniting for the sole reason that they like playing music... But behind the grumpiness, there was something earnest and enearing about their living entirely as themselves.
The seats I had were angled so that I could glimpse backstage where I caught a long embrace and the obvious love between the brothers and their opener, writer/performer of Track 3 on this list, Richard Ashcroft. The concert has led me to dive into all of the lesser known Oasis songs and, while it's hard to choose just one for this exercise, in more appreciation of middle aged men showing love for each other in whatever ways they are capable, I have chosen Cast No Shadow... a song Noel Gallagher wrote about Ashcroft. For their performance at Wembley, Oasis had asked the Verve frontman to play in support and it was beautiful.
Track 9 - September - Jackson Browne - These Days - Back to Colorado and the start of the School year. As I previously mentioned, g decided to move to Cheyenne Mountain Junior High between 7th and 8th grade, which is precisely the year I did the same. If you haven't been inside the school in 30 years, as some of us have not, it has changed. And yet, there are parts of the school that brought up the smallest fragments of memories I have from that time. I do not have a single remaining memory of the cafeteria but I somehow found my old locker. The whole experience was a little odd and a little disorienting. These Days by Jackson Browne is the song that came to mind to back this whole experience. Not just because the lyrics are so prescient for the strange emotional journey of a middle-aged man, but because Browne wrote it when he was only 16 and it was first released by German artist Nico in 1967. Nico had complicated feelings about the song and tried to forget it. Browne had forgotten it until it was licensed for The Royal Tenenbaums, only remembering it fully when he saw the movie in 2001. The mixed feelings, the desire to forget, and yet the periodically revisiting. The trying to find comfort in what someone else tells you is uncomfortable. All of this is Junior High. The fact that there are two versions. One performed by the older Jackson Browne revisiting it years later and the one by the young woman releasing it as something new... There was meaning there for me.
Track 10 - October - Scars on 45 - Take You Home - October was a fun one. G started settling into her new school with some new friends and found a new stable to ride at in Fountain, CO. The rest of the month was a whirlwind of blueberry birthday donuts for me and lego for her... well some of the lego was for me as well. One of the highlights was the opening of the BritPub in Colorado Springs. For a few years, a couple of friends and I had been looking for ways to support concepts in town that led to any type of analog social gathering. Through that, we found a few Brits who were bringing the concept of a traditional British Pub to Downtown Colorado Springs and we got to witness the realization of a true analog gathering place. One of the partners, Nova, is the driving force behind the "gathering" aspect of the pub and is also the keyboardist of British band Scars on 45, and I wanted to include them in our playlist.
You can find Nova at the piano most Friday nights at the BritPub. There is also rumour of a video of Nova and the band performing a Fleetwood Mac cover for a radio station in Portland early in their career. But, I will let you find that for yourself as I'm not legally allowed to post any links to media that shows Nova without his mustache.
Scars on 45, funny enough, chose their band name after Noel Gallagher of Oasis was chatting early days with the yet to be named band and reportedly asked: "A band with no name? What kind of f*cking band is that?" before walking away... I guess we can take his word that he is a "grumpy f*ck" indeed.
Track 11 - November - Scala & Kolacny Brothers - Creep - If you didn't already know that I had feelings around music that wobbles on the tightrope between love and obsession, you've definitely figured it out by reading this far. What you will be happy to know is that it was passed on. G has been spending the year singing, singing and singing. She is a member of 3 different choirs, one of which, the Colorado Middle School All State Choir, she was selected to out of a pool of 1,653 students from more than 150 schools across the state. If you are within even a medium distance of the Soprano, you will hear her singing... sometimes concurrently with riding a horse or doing homework or taking a bath or when she's supposed to be going to effing sleep. November was the heart of choir season as all of her choirs prepared for the heavy load of the holidays. I, like everyone else, love hearing a youth choir do holiday classics. But in keeping with our theme, I have included a European girls' choir, Skala& Klacny Brothers performing a British nostaltic classic instead.
Track 12 - December - Tom Odell - Real Love - I am writing this playlist recap on the first of December while back in Bath, UK, and I am already feeling the end of the year and the meaning of the holidays. G doesn't allow us to officially start celebrating Christmas until after her birtday, but for me it's all part of the same season of love and reflection. She is in Colorado performing the Nutcracker with the Colorado Springs Children's Chorale and I am using my time in Bath to get into the spirit. British Christmas is as special as the movies make it and Bath is particularly festive as it shuts down the streets and hosts the largest Christmas market in the UK all throughout the city centre... I've already found the venison sausage and mulled wine. I will spend the rest of the month back in Colorado with g for both birthday (blueberry donuts) and Christmas (holiday adverts) traditions. The holiday advert tradition is something we started while living in England and is more specifically the John Lewis Holiday Advert Marathon. John Lewis, the British department store, has become known releasing particularly poingnant Christmas advertisements and it has become a joke that the whole country waits in anticipation for the release of each year's advert to signal the start to the holiday season. The formula they use is to pull at all of the strings that connect your TV to your tearducts. Usually including a mix of nostalgia and love and song covers. My nomination for the greatest one of all is 2014's Monty the Penguin. Our tradition is to start with their first Christmas advert from 2007 and watch them all in order on Christmas Eve. You may just want to look up Monty the Penguin and let Tom Odell's cover of John Lennon's Real Love hit you right in the feels. Or, you may want to sit down for your own marathon all and discover the other song from our 2025 playlist that backs a different holiday advert. Of course, you may want to forgo John Lewis adverts completely because you are busy with all of your own family and all of your own traditions this holiday. Of these options, I hope you pick the latter and have a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.
The Ralstons' 2025 Playlist
The soundtrack that embodied our 2025, available as a playlist if you're looking to explore the music.
Ben's Book List 2025
Based on what I've read this year, not that they came out this year.
Best Book 2025
There are Rivers in the Sky - Elif Shafak - A multi-generational story where characters are united by drops of water, and a love of the people, culture and history of Mesopotamia. The story flows like a river while the river is a character.
Runner Up
Greenwood - Michael Christie - Another story across multiple generations. Characters united not by water, by their love of nature and the need to preserve it.
Honorable Mention
Among Friends - Hal Ebbott - Not a beautiful story, but beautifully written. Tension between socialite family friends over an encounter and characters constantly evaluating their relationships with each other. Hard to read, impossible to forget.
Best Mystery
The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle - Stuart Turton - Spend the day with every person of interest, and if you haven't solved it by day 8, start the process again.
Best Thriller
The Memory Police - Yōko Ogawa - A Japanese villiage where the police take the people's memories. If you remember, you will be taken.
Best Fantasy
The Will of the Many - James Islington - I actually read Islington's The Strength of the Few in 2025. But, I don't feel I can recommend a sequel on a book list so I will recommend Part I. Both books are equally gripping. Visit a world where citizens hold their chosen place in the Heirarchy... taking Will from those below them and ceding their will to those above.
Best Sci-Fi
The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet - Becky Chambers - A quirky story about an interspecies space crew contracted for a dangerous mission. I also read the sequel A Closed and Common Orbit, which I think might even be better. But I'm sticking with my policy of recommending book one of a series.
Best Comedy
A Fraction of the Whole - Steve Toltz - A book as funny as it is absurd. A father and son navigate life and crime in Australia. I have a hard time describing this book. Almost every time I dropped in my bookmark I was audibly laughing and inaudibly asking "what... the... fuu.....?"
Best Non-Fiction
Soldiers and Kings - Jason de León - With all the rhetoric about illegal immigration, spend some time with the teenagers who are helping people escape violence and come to the United States
Memorable Passages
When discussing songwriting, David Bowie said that "the greatest lyric is the one you did not expect and yet somehow recognize." While reading, I often come across passages that I do not expect but somehow recognize and decide to make note of. Here are some of the most memorable passages I came across in 2025.
"'When Ysa was born, I was terrified. I knew exactly what I had to do to be a king, but to be a father... I was so sure I would fail her. That being a good ruler and a good parent were incompatible. And then your mother said something.' He smiles. Eyes warm and glistening with fond sad recollection. 'She told me that a child needs to hear and truly understand only three phrases from their father as they grow up. 'I love you.' 'I will help.' And, 'I don't know.' The two of us were only just getting to that last one, Diago. You were only just beginning to see that sometimes, I had no answers. No simple way forward. It's the hidden truth of how we eventually have to face the world - of being an adult. None of us know.'"
- The Strength of the Few, James Islington
"'Circe,' he says, ' it will be all right.'
It is not the saying of an oracle or a profit. They are words you might speak to a child. I have heard him say them to our daughters, when he rocked them back to sleep from a nightmare, when he dressed their small cuts, soothed whatever stung. His skin is familiar as my own beneath my fingers. I listen to his breath, warm upon the night air, and somehow I am comforted. He does not mean that it does not hurt. He does not mean that we are not frightened. Only that we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive."
- Circe, Madeline Miller
"I touched the loose peg gently, running my hands over the warm wood of the lute. The varnish was sraped and scuffed in places. It had been treated unkindly in the past, but that didn't make it less lovely underneath.
So yes. It had flaws, but what does that matter when it comes to matters of the heart? We love what we love. Reason does not enter into it. In many ways, unwise love is the truest love. Anyone can love a thing because. That's as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect."
- The Wise Man's Fear, Patrick Rothfuss
"'Remember, my heart. Story-time is different from clock-time.'
Clock-time, however punctual it may purport to be, is distorted and deceptive. It runs under the illusion that everything is moving steadily forward, and the future, therefore, will always be better than the past. Story-time understands the fragility of peace, the fickleness of circumstances, the dangers lurking in the night but also appreciate small acts of kindness. That is why minorities don't live in clock time.
They live in story-time."
- There are Rivers in the Sky, Elif Shafak
"'All you can do, Rosemary - all any of us can do - is work to be something positive instead. That is a choice every sapient must make every day of their life. The universe is what we make of it. It's up to you to decide what part you will play. What I see in you is a woman who has a clear idea of what she wants to be'
Rosemary gave a short laugh. 'Most days I wake up and have no idea what the hell I'm doing.'
He puffed his cheeks. 'I don't mean the practical details. Nobody ever figures those out. I mean the important thing. The thing I had to do too.' He made a clucking sound. He knew she would not understand it, but it came naturally. The sort of sound a mother made over a child learning to stand. 'You're trying to be someone good.'"
- The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, Becky Chambers
"While Terry joined the others in the pool, I subjected myself to a dreadful thing called musical chairs, another cruel game. There's one chair short, and when the music stops you have to run for a seat. The life lessons never stop at a children's party. The music blares. You never know when it's going to stop. You're on edge the whole game; the tension is unbearable. Everyone dances in a circle around the ring of chairs, but it's no happy dance. Everyone has his eyes on the mother over by the radio, her hand poised on the volume control. Now and then a child wrongly anticipates her and dives for a chair. He's shouted at. He jumps off the seat again. He's a wreck. The music plays on. The children's faces are contorted in terror. No one wants to be excluded. The mother taunts the children by pretending to reach for the volume. The children wish she were dead.
The game is an analogy for life: there are not enough chairs or good times to go around, not enough food, not enough joy, nor beds nor jobs nor laughs nor friends nor smiles nor money nor clean air to breathe...and yet the music goes on."
- A Fraction of the Whole, Steve Toltz
Let's Stay in Touch
If you found this page because it was shared by a mutual friend or family member, but I had omitted you from the mailing list, please know there was nothing intentional about it. I am sometimes doubting who will want updates, often doubting whether I've reached out before and always doubting whether I have correct contact information.
Please send me updated contact details below or just drop a line to say hi. Despite my quest to support analog social connection, I still value the digital kind.
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