There's this old Christmas record that dad had in his collection when I was a kid, alongside the Tijuana Brass and Kingston Trio albums with the threadbare corners on the jackets, called Christmas with Chet Atkins. It's a mélange of hi-fi electric guitar numbers, sounding almost Hawaiian with a friendly-ghostly 1950's choir, and austere religious peices like the Coventry Carol, spelled out with a single guitar.

It's the greatest Christmas record I've ever heard --reverent, a little depressing, yet cheerfully profound, like a Charlie Brown cartoon. When I hear it I am again a covetous 8 year old girl dreaming of Jaws: The Game under the tree, but more abstractly, trusting that my dad is going to put it there, and in the morning, will wake up and make coffee, and play Christmas with Chet Atkins on the record player.

I never again heard this record after leaving home; it stayed behind in dad's record cabinet, filed away with Elvis and Herb Alpert. Apparently there is a badly re-mastered CD version of it out there, with the great cover art swapped out for something slap-dash, about which Chet Atkins purists rail angrily on the Internet. Every Christmas I've looked passingly into finding the original, but I know that in many ways, it wouldn't be the same.

One evening a few winters ago, I walked out to the mailbox across the street to collect the daily tide of advertisements and bills. I stood there fumbling with the key, rightly expecting little of the ritual, but was surprised to discover that my dad had sent me a box. Inside it was Christmas with Chet Atkins, on CD.

But: it wasn't the remastered CD about which the Atkins purists rail. It was the album itself, that dad had somehow recorded onto a disc, complete with the amazing hiss and pop, something you don't think you miss, but you do. He'd even printed out the original cover, the one with the Gretsch electric guitar leaned up against a pine tree in the snow.

Thanks, dad. I love you.

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