Music Mondays; The Land of Make Believe

I love Christmas. It should be full of love, laughter and happiness, irrespective of religious beliefs. For children too, it's also a wonderful, magical time of believing in a Land of Make Believe.

I think it's so important for children to develop an imagination and enjoy the world of Santa, elves, giants, witches and a host of other fairytale characters. Having the capacity to imagine is what sets us apart from other mammals, to create, to develop, to inspire is a human gift and I believe we should encourage our children to develop their sense of imagination because reality, unfortunately, comes all too soon.

I loved reading stories like The Princess and the Pea, Rapunzel and of course the more popular stories like Snow White and Cinderella as a child and in turn I loved reading them to my boys. Everyone loves a fairytale, be it Star Wars, Lord of the Rings or Shrek and there's no better story than when good triumphs over evil.

There's so much to be enjoyed about Christmas including friendship and camaraderie and even when I no longer believed in Santa one of my favourite things about Christmas and New Year's Day was gathering in front of the television with my 2 brothers and my sister to watch the now defunct Top of the Pops. The Christmas Specials would always have the most popular songs of the year and, of course, the Christmas no 1 which in those days was coveted by all the big artists. These days it's pretty much certain to be the prerequisite of the latest X factor winner which kind of takes the fun out of it. Still, it's still better than St Winifred's Girls Choir.....( I guess you'll be only one to remember that one Paul! Hmm... maybe Mike and Gary too...)

The song I'm playing today is The Land of Make Believe by Bucks Fizz. It was very popular over the Christmas season back in 1981 but it didn't hit the top spot until January 1982 being kept of the no 1 by The Human League and Don't You Want Me Baby from their album Dare.

Bucks Fizz, as their rather frothy name suggests were a slightly cheesy group manufactured to represent the United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest which they won with a catchy but rather corny song called Making Your Mind Up and an even more corny skirt ripping routine! Like most other Eurovision winners their star was expected to wane pretty quickly but after 2 top twenty hits later in 1981 and a no 1 with Making Your Mind Up they hit no 1 again in January 1982 with The Land of Make Believe which was then followed by numerous big hits. Their Greatest Hits album is well worth the purchase for some classic 80's pop tunes.

Although Bucks Fizz still continue to perform today the line up has changed a number of times. The original group suffered a major setback when their tour bus was involved in a major collision in 1984 which resulted in one member, Bobby G, sustaining serious head injuries from which he took a long time to recover. Then in 1985, Jay Aston, the curly haired blonde with the "come hither" eyes left in acrimonious circumstances and that, regrettably, spelt the real end of the heady days of Bucks Fizz's Chart topping success.

Here's The Land of Make Believe, it always reminds me of Christmas. It's such a magical time for little children and I hope that wherever you are in the world you and your families have a wonderful Christmas.

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