Southern Tales, Christmas edition at the Gardens

Entertainers Dolores Hydock and Bobby Horton will bring stories and sing-a-longs, holiday style, to the Birmingham Botanical Gardens this month. The fifth annual Southern Tales: Songs, Stories and Sing-A-Longs will be held Sunday, Dec. 8 at 2 p.m. 

The collection of Christmas carols this season will be familiar, but the stories and songs are all new for 2013. Hydock will offer an encore of her much-requested “Christmas Letters of Thanks,” while Horton will bring fellow musician Tuck Kornegay to join his holiday mix. Nina Reeves and Sammye Hill also join this year’s event for the first time, adding their own collection of stories to the afternoon’s festivities.

Hydock, an actress and story performer, has released seven award-winning storytelling albums and is a founding member of Birmingham’s Association of Cajun Music Enthusiasts.

Horton has been a part of Birmingham’s Three on a String for the last 35 years and has produced and performed music for 13 Ken Burns documentaries, including “The Civil War” and “Baseball.” Horton is widely recognized as one of the country’s leading authorities on music from the Civil War period.

The event will be held in the Linn Henley Lecture Hall. Tickets are $25 and can be purchased online at bbgardens.org/southerntales.