One of the biggest benefits of having your youngest child graduate from high school is that you never again have to hear "Good King Wenceslas" played on honking fifth-grade horns to the same beat as "Hot Cross Buns."

But you might have to listen to the second-graders play and sing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" on ukuleles if your oldest child is the teacher.

In Haines, the school Christmas concert is a tradition. December wouldn't be the same without hearing four versions of "Jingle Bells" or too many variations on the winter wonderland theme to count in one evening.

I was debating whether or not to go when I bumped into the school activities director at the library. I saw a flicker of envy when she said that I didn't have to attend the concert anymore. I told her I might go anyway, and she said that this year it would feature performances from each class, kindergarten through twelfth grade. That's about 300 students.

It could last three hours.

She said she had talked to the new music teacher and tried to convince him to shorten it up to two hours. "The high school band cut their numbers down to six," she said.

Six? That meant six band numbers in addition to the class songs, the elementary school and junior high band performances, and all the shuffling with instruments and music stands, from the seats on the basketball court or bleachers to the stage and back again in our combination gym-auditorium.

It was going to be long night.

My teacher-daughter assured me that her class would play and sing at the beginning, and that I could exit afterwards. I stood in the back next to the superintendent and the science teacher. We exchanged glances of mutual condolence. The school music program has suffered in the last few years, with a revolving door of new teachers. The latest, Mr. McCallie, is from somewhere in the Midwest and is a big young guy with a ponytail. The folks at the assisted living home like him; he sang and played the guitar over there during last week's ice cream social, but that's about all I'd heard.

Well, the first surprise was the fledgling high school guitar group; there must have been a dozen teenagers plucking and strumming in sync. They played "Greensleeves," "Simple Gifts," and earned the rapt awe of the audience with Bach's "Minuet in G." Their guitars sounded like harpsichords.

This certainly was different. The new music teacher may be on to something, I thought. From the looks on the faces all around me, I wasn't the only one. This was not bad at all.

Then the Kindergartners sang and gestured all together with great feeling, "All I Want For Christmas is My Two Front Teeth," to a burst of happy clapping from the crowd. I heard the science teacher say, "That will be the high point of the evening," as it has been since my children wore their holiday best and watched the very same teacher kneel in front of them in her velvet dress and Santa hat, directing.

Turns out, the science teacher was wrong. That was only one of the highlights in an evening with no low-lights. What's not to love about a tribe of seven- and eight-year-olds who can play "Jingle Bells" on the ukulele? Or a sixth grade band that can toot out a comfortable "Home on the Range"?

Remember that diminished high school band that had me contemplating earplugs? I now prefer to think of them as Charles and the Jazzettes. They may have only one trumpet player, but he stole the show on an arrangement of a classic carol called "Hark! The Herald Trumpets Swing." I'm glad they played six songs.

Although by then I was tired of standing. I slipped into an empty seat next to my friend Alice, who reacted the same way all of us, it seemed, were, with raised eyebrows and a smile. "This is pretty good," she whispered, and said she wished her daughter, who was in the choir, would play in the band.