This holiday season, radio and television stations across the nation continue to broadcast greetings from families to their loved ones in military service abroad and from veterans to back to their families. The Barter Theatre’s performance of “WMKS: Christmas 1942” puts that tradition into perspective.

Frank Higgins was commissioned by the theater to follow up his “WMKS: Where Music Kills Sorrow,” but you needn’t be familiar with that piece to enjoy this one. The setting is Christmas Eve at a radio station in Big Stone Gap, Virginia—and the show weaves together letters from veterans, then stationed in Europe, Africa, and the South Pacific, with old-time, patriotic, and holiday musical performances. The theater audience serves as the studio audience, and four volunteers are even invited to come up for the audience participation number, “When I First Came to this Land.”

On stage you’ve got Doc and Alma, the older couple who started the station; their son Johnny, now a famous recording artist who’s come home for the first time in seven years; Willy, Cindy, and Arthel, the young family who’s taken over the station in Johnny’s absence; Audrey and Robert, the black couple who perform in the show; and four band members, including 14-year old fiddle player Claire Morison, Doug Dorschug, Tim Robertson, and depending on which show you catch, either Ed Snodderly of O Brother, Where Art Thou fame, or Buddy Woodward from the award-winning bluegrass band Dixie Bee-Liners, whom we interviewed for the first episode of WVRU’s The Listening Room.

The Barter has been lauded for shows highlighting Appalachian music. From “Keep on the Sunny Side: The Songs and Story of the Original Carter Family” to “Man of Constant Sorrow: The Story of the Stanley Brothers” to “Jimmie Rodgers: America’s Blue Yodeler,” the theater seems to know they’ve struck a winning combination.

Actor Eugene Wolf even seems to conjure his previous role as A.P. Carter in this portrayal of Doc Carroll in “WMKS: Christmas 1942,” especially during his performance of “Are You Tired of Me My Darlin” with longtime Barter staple Tricia Matthews, who played his wife, Alma, with keen timing and wit.

Dan Folino plays their son Johnny Carroll, the small-town boy who made it big as a movie and recording star but has to convince his father he hasn’t turned his back on his roots. Folino plays an Elvis-like character with his military uniform and strong confident voice on numbers such as “I’ll Fly Away” with Amy Baldwin playing Cindy Turner, Johnny’s former sweetheart, and the memorable “Crawdad Song.”

Although Cynthia Thomas’s soulful voice, church-lady attire, and general spunk as Audrey nearly stole the show, it was Jasper McGruder, playing Audrey’s husband, Robert, who really hit it home with his bluesy harmonica and his emotional solo, “I Wonder When I’ll Be Called a Man.”

The role of the child, Arthel or Arthella, alternates by performance. We saw it performed by first-grader Andy Heil, who, while cute and generally successful getting out most of his few lines clearly, seemed a liability to the concentration of the other actors.

But together, the cast re-creates an era that seems simple in memory but was just as difficult in many ways. So many of the themes endure, it’s hard not to identify: the struggles of family life, the strain of wartime, emotions brought up by the holidays. Editor Tim W. Jackson thinks the story lines all tidied up a bit too easily, but the Barter Theatre knows that happy endings are what audiences want, especially around the holidays. If nothing else, “WMKS: Christmas 1942″ is a great nostalgic way to spend an afternoon getting into the Christmas spirit. Performances run through Dec. 27.

Taryn Chase Jackson would like to send best wishes to all the servicemen and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and hopes they’ll be coming home in 2010.