Christmas carols are timeless. Christmas cards aren't.
Just ask Del. John A. Cosgrove, R-Chesapeake, who still gets comments on his holiday crooning years after cutting a Christmas CD.
A few years back, Cosgrove decided he'd rather not send out Christmas cards.
"Everyone sends out Christmas cards," he said. "Sometimes they are not even signed." Then they get thrown out.
So Cosgrove decided on a more personal and lasting expression of Christmas spirit to send to 20,000 of his closest friends and supporters in the 78th District.
"A Cosgrove Christmas" featured the delegate crooning such Christmas classics as "Silent Night" and "Oh Come, All Ye Faithful." Cosgrove's personal favorites are "Ave Maria" and "Away in a Manger."
"It's not the best produced, but I still have people stopping me in the grocery store saying 'I was just listening to you!'" the singing public servant recently recounted .
Though he is an electronics engineer by training and has been a member of the House of Delegates since 2002, Cosgrove is not a novice behind the microphone. The tenor trained in voice at the Shenandoah Conservatory of Music, and he performs regularly for groups in and around his Hampton Roads district.
Every Valentine's Day, he serenades the staff of the General Assembly Building outside his office, taking on musical Mount Everests such as "Unchained Melody" by the Righteous Brothers.
Cosgrove said he has only about 50 copies left of his Christmas CD from seven years ago. This year, he did send cards.
"I don't want to overdo it," he said. Besides, some of the Christmas favorites that Cosgrove would like to sing, including "White Christmas" and "The Christmas Song," are not in the public domain and would require licensing royalties to record.
Instead, Cosgrove is thinking about recording a disc of patriotic songs for his next musical project.
And this Christmas will be a family Christmas at the Cosgrove house. A gathering on Christmas Eve, presents Christmas Day and "A Cosgrove Christmas" on the CD player?
"Nope," said Cosgrove. "I don't like listening to my own voice."
jnolan@timesdispatch.com
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