Holidays 2024: Charlie Brown music means Christmas in the Main home

BY SHAWN LOUGHLIN

It is fitting, perhaps, that the predominant Christmas memory of one of the area’s most prolific radio presenters has its roots in music. For Goderich’s Phil Main, long-time CKNX on-air personality and man about town, the holidays simply aren’t the holidays without A Charlie Brown Christmas.

 

That iconic music - performed by the Vince Guaraldi Trio - signals that it’s the holidays for Main. He always has to watch the special or listen to the music over the holidays and then, and only then, does he truly feel as though Christmas has arrived.
And he’s not alone. Just recently, one of his adult children told him that she has an almost-Pavlovian response to hearing that music that brings her back to opening presents as a child with her dad. She told him that she had heard the music out in the world and was immediately transported back to Huron County for a Christmas of old.

 

Indeed, Main says that he would always get up in the morning and brew a pot of coffee and put the music on (or play the special on the T.V.) on Christmas morning. Luckily, there were no surprise drop-ins, he said, as his house at the time was fashioned with an old-fashioned dinner bell, so it wasn’t until after he rang it that the children came down and were ready for Christmas morning.

 

Though, he says, that may not be entirely true. During that same exchange with one of his daughters, Main was told that they could always hear him coming up and down the stairs, so they knew, when they heard a signature sound, that it was almost time for Christmas presents and breakfast together.

 

Main says that, for years, his ankles crack distinctly as he ascends or descends a staircase. And that, his children eventually told him, was the secondary soundtrack to their Christmases.

 

As for Christmas celebrations as a youngster, Main said he just remembers the atmosphere of the holidays, happiness and the feeling of being together around the holidays.

 

There was another local family who, for many years, the Mains would celebrate the holidays with. Those celebrations would eventually grow as the years went on, but they would always get together on Christmas Eve for a bit of a soup potluck dinner. Everyone would come up with their own soup for the event, bring it along and, as they readied for the coming Christmas morning, certainly no one went home hungry.

 

Many would go to church that night as well before returning home and opening one present before heading to bed. Then, the next morning, everyone was keen to see what Santa Claus had brought for them and left under the tree.

 

When he was a kid, however, he had a big Christmas dinner and opened his presents on Christmas Eve, a tradition he has kept up with his family to a certain degree, but with adding in some presents on Christmas Day. As a young man, he would just relax on Christmas Day with his family and play the games they had received, play with their new toys and wear their new clothes.

 

Main has just recently semi-retired from the world of radio after several decades of being the voice of Huron County in many ways. He is also the host of a wildly successful podcast entitled A Life That’s Good, which began as a project leading up to his 60th birthday, but has expanded into a storytelling vehicle for the area unlike any other. He hopes to keep the podcast going, he said, and is encouraged by recent meetings on potential partnerships that might lead to the continuation of the podcast.

 

He has, however, taken the last 12 months as a time to reflect back on the working portion of his life and all that it’s meant to him as well as to the community. No more early mornings though, he says, and he is now living in Goderich with his wife, whom he has nicknamed “Milly”, which is short for millennial to his “Boomer” and he is looking forward to the next chapter of his life this holiday season and being reunited with his beloved hometown of Goderich.