And this song of mine, in three-quarter time

So the tradition of my blogs (and a long-standing tradition it is) is that on or about Christmas Eve, I take a minute to talk about some of my favorite Christmas songs, before moving on to What Christmas Is All About, Charlie Brown.

First, forever and always, there is "Fairytale Of New York" by the Pogues with Kirsty MacColl. It's been five years since Kirsty was wrongfully taken from us, and her angel's voice still hits me like no other. Some deaths just strike you as fundementally WRONG, and it cannot be that the sun ever shines on a world without Kirsty in it.

I could have been someone
Well so could anyone
You took my dreams
From me when I first found you
I kept them with me babe
I put them with my own
Can't make it all alone
I've built my dreams around you

God, how she shimmered. She's one of those people who when I'm going down and I can't see...well, it's her voice, that's all. Her beautiful fucking shining voice that brings a tear to my eye and leaves me weak in the knees.

Then there's "The Christmas Waltz," as recorded by Frank Sinatra the second time as a single for Capitol records. It shouldn't necessarily work-it's not the most inspired lyric anybody ever wrote,

It's that time of year
When the world fall in love
Ev'ry song you hear seems to say
"Merry Christmas, May Your New Year
Dreams Come True"

and it's got a freaking choral group on it-but it's haunting (in a good way). And as the last chorus fades out, Frank says "Merry Christmas," and he sounds...innocent. I'm quite sure (from my reading) that innocence had passed him by a long long time ago, but in that moment, on that record, I believe it. Wishing you and yours the same thing too, Frank.

The Charlie Brown Christmas musical soundtrack is a must, of course. What it always captures for me is the melancholy of the holiday. I'm convinced that one of the reasons so many of us took Charlie Brown & the other characters to our hearts isn't just that they were funny or Snoopy was cute. It's because, at a time when some people might have been scared to (some still are), Charlie Brown was saying things like

"I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus. Christmas is coming, but I'm not happy. I don't feel the way I'm supposed to feel."

It literally was "the good grief." Plus, it's an obvious thing to say, but I seriously love Vince Guaraldi's piano playing.

Continuing along our merry way, we come to "She Won't Be Home" by Erasure. A minor, but underrated classic. I still love the way the lines "I wanted to say to you how much I need to be with you," repeated in the chorus into the fade, start to sound, unintentionally, like "I wanted to say to you how much I need to scream with you."

And speaking of a scream (The American Scream):

"You...hate Christmas?"
"I detest it. It's horrible, it's fascist. It excludes the lonely, the outcast, the ugly. All Christmases do, whether they're Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu...all the ceremonies are for members only. They make the rest of us so miserable."

~Shade #19