La Bella and I went to a reading of “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” with songs added, like a lessons and carols service. It was beautiful. They sang a wide range of songs, including a clever choral version of “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.”

This song was written by John Rox in the 1950s, a few years before his death. Rox, born John Jefferson Barber in 1907, was a writer of novelty songs.

I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas

I want a hippopotamus for Christmas
Only a hippopotamus will do
I don’t want a doll, no dinky Tinkertoy
I want a hippopotamus to play with and enjoy

I want a hippopotamus for Christmas
I don’t think Santa Claus will mind, do you?
He won’t have to use our dirty chimney flue
Just bring him through the front door
That’s the easy thing to do

I can see me now on Christmas morning
Creeping down the stairs
Oh, what joy and what surprise
When I open up my eyes
To see my hippo hero standing there

I want a hippopotamus for Christmas
Only a hippopotamus will do
No crocodiles, or rhinoceroseses
I only like hippopotamuseses
And hippopotamuses like me too

I want a hippopotamus for Christmas
a hippopotamus is all I want
Mom says the hippo would eat me up
But then teacher says a hippo is a vegetarian

I want a hippopotamus for Christmas
The kind I saw this summer at the zoo
there’s lots of room for him in our two car garage
I’d feed him there and wash him there
And give him his massage

I can see me now on Christmas morning
Creeping down the stairs
Oh, what joy and what surprise
When I open up my eyes
To see my hippo hero standing there

I want a hippopotamus for Christmas
Only a hippopotamus will do
No crocodiles, or rhinoceroseses
I only like hippopotamuses
And hippopotamuses like me too

The concert was excellent and we saw a lot of friends there. When I was a young woman, I saw the groups of older ladies who went around together like teenage girls and thought that I would like to do that when I got old. Apparently I’m old enough now. La Bella and I are both married, but our husbands don’t care to go to the kinds of things we like to go to, so we go together. It’s fun.

The song is also fun, and Christmas is fun as well. Though tradition would advocate a quick shift from Advent to Christmas, as we have from Lent to Easter, our culture has the fun of Christmas now, before the season properly begins. I don’t want to miss it.