Happy Xmas (War Is Over)

I know "Happy Xmas" is John Lennon, not "real" Beatles. But today is the anniversary of John Lennon's assassination. (By Mark David Chapman. Who was reading Catcher in the Rye.) And that, plus the fact that this war is most definitely not over, besides Christmas fast approaching, made me want to use that title.

I really like Christmas music. Usually I pretend to sigh and roll my eyes with everyone else when I hear the first strains of "Carol of the Bells" sometime in early November, but when it snows and there are lights up everywhere in the neighborhood (by the way, we have lights this year for the first time, and red bows under our garage lights, because, as my dad claims, "Nothing says festive like red bows"), then the music feels right. It adds to the season. With that in mind, here are my top ten Christmas tunes. And I apologize to any non-Christmas-celebrating folk; I respect you, but today I'm being sentimental.

10. "Christmas Time is Here." From A Charlie Brown Christmas, which unquestionably beats out Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer as far as old Christmas specials go.
9. "The Little Drummer Boy." I've heard several versions of this one; my dad's personal favorite is the one by Joan Jett (one of his favorite artists, known mostly for "I Love Rock'n'Roll"). For some reason it's really nice.
8. "Angels We Have Heard on High." When I was about six, my sister and I got in trouble in church for singing the wrong words to this one. We thought they were the real words. Whoops. I still think of that every time I hear this, but I still like it.
7. "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring." I don't know if it was originally intended as a Christmas song, but it's in more than one of my Christmas piano music books. Josh Groban's version is the best I've heard.
6. "Carol of the Bells."
5. "What Child is This?" and
4. "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." All three hauntingly beautiful.
3. "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." Just happy and slow. The kind of thing you want to hear while you're sitting inside a warm house with cocoa and a crackling fire and colored lights blinking and snow falling outside. Sigh.
2. "One Small Child" by Rebecca St. James. For some reason it's just really beautiful, a nice combination of rock and hymn. It kind of drives home the supposed point of the holiday: the birth of Jesus.
1. "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On an Open Fire)" by Nat King Cole. No question. His voice is just so warm and soft, and of course the song's a classic. When it comes to Christmas music, this one's in a league of its own.

If you've read this far without getting bored... I'm home sick today. It's almost as if my body knows when I really, really need a day off. And even though I know everyone else has this much work and I shouldn't complain as if I'm the only one, I felt like I really needed a day off to catch up.

Early December can be a beautiful time of year. For some reason, the sight of bare branches against the sky has always been a poignant and beautiful one for me. Our neighborhood looks like a Christmas card, with the snow and the festive red bows everywhere. Everything seems strangely sad, though. The other day I was on the bus, looking out the window at the snow and trees and setting sun, and maybe because I was listening to Ben Folds' Songs for Silverman (a generally melancholy album), I felt very inexplicably depressed. I find myself making random objects into metaphors for the disintegration of the American dream, depression, ennui. I did a lot of that in that story I wrote for the Creative Writing Festival. It's not hard to do at this time of year.