Bill Kehr is a retired Wichita Municipal Court judge and former attorney who, in his downtime, likes to throw himself into projects.
“I've written a number of books over the years,” Kehr said. “ … Had a few children's books, horror book, a legal secretary book — kind of like John Grisham, something about a fraternity murders book...”
One day in 2020, Kehr came across a factoid about a modern Christmas classic from an R&B diva.
“I saw that Mariah Carey made $72 million on her Christmas song, and that stuck in my head,” Kehr said of Carey’s 1994 hit, “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”
“Fast forward a number of months, and I'm working on a nonprofit show … and for some reason, Mariah Carey came up while I'm talking to the guy … and he goes, ‘Well, what are you going to do about it?’ … And finally I said, ‘I could write a Christmas song for $5 million.’”
What Kehr ended up writing is a new song titled “Santa Was a Friend of Mine.” The man he was talking to, Gus Frey, ended up producing and playing guitar on the song.
Initially, Kehr intended the song to be a sad country Christmas ballad sung by a man. But Frey asked him to take it in a different direction — a vintage-style pop song sung by a woman.
This is where Sarah Green, Kehr’s former colleague and fellow judge, comes in.
“I had heard Sarah singing in her office, and she told me she was really good in the choir,” Kehr said. “And so I volunteered her to be the singer and introduced her to Gus.”
According to Green, the themes of the song resonated with her.
“The song ties a little bit into that when you're an adult and you've made choices that got you to a place where maybe you don't want to be, what would it be like to be able to go back?” she said.
Kehr added, “In court … it was a daily — if not hourly — moment when somebody would ask me to give them one more chance.
“When I wrote, ‘I want to see Christmas like a child again,’ the second line I wrote was, ‘I need another chance.’”
How does being a judge prepare you for writing a Christmas song? Kehr says it comes down to being a practiced writer, whether it’s opinions or lyrics.
“You learn to write where you can concisely tell people what you want,” he said. “And so I think a lot of music is a fairly concise telling of whatever story you want to portray.”
And for some, even just hearing a snippet of a Christmas song can conjure up images of good tidings and joy. Green said she experienced that first-hand.
“I spend some time Christmas caroling at a nursing home and people who maybe aren't aware of everything going on because of illness or whatever,” Green said. “When you start singing one of those Christmas songs or those spiritual hymns, they sing along.
“They remember it from their childhood somewhere in their mind. They remember those … lyrics.”
For Kehr, it was having children and seeing Christmas through their eyes that helped him rediscover the magic.
“When I was young, it was the best time of the year. I mean, you got out of school, people gave you presents. Santa came,” he said.
“When I was middle-aged — before I had children … I'd view it a little bit differently, in that it became something I had to do, and you'd go see family and buy gifts for relatives if you needed to. And so you may not look at it with so much excitement.
“But then when I had children of my own. It just kind of reinvented itself. And you could see the excitement of children looking at Christmas and and it kind of comes back.”
