Coventry Carol

One of my all-time favorite Christmas albums is Loreena McKennitt’s A Winter Garden, released in 1995—the very year I graduated high school.

At that time, I was working part-time mornings at Natural Wonders (while teaching guitar late afternoons and evenings). Natural Wonders was essentially the first mainstream “New Age” store to infiltrate American malls. We sold rain sticks, telescopes, Zen sand gardens, and an endless stream of CDs.

The required background music for the store was a relentless mix of John Tesh, Enya, Yanni, Jim Brickman, and everything…