Twenty-twenty has been quite a year. I know we all say that every year however this year can’t go supernova fast enough. No need to restate the obvious crappification of 2020. I will put a different spin on the year and the holiday season, so it’s story time…
It’s Advent Season when we reflect and prepare our hearts for Christmas. Most self-respecting department stores start throwing up the decorations the day after Halloween which I consider a “gateway holiday.” The overhead music changes. You have the old standard songs, Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, Burl Ives Holly Jolly Christmas. You bust out the modern twist Mannheim Steamroller Christmas and rock out to some Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Heck even Thurl Ravencroft’s You’re a Mean One (Mr. Grinch) makes the playlist with Brenda Lee’s Rocking Around the Christmas Tree.
For years there was one Christmas song that would unglue me, I would react to with such a vile and irrational disgust. Hearing it was like the worst sound imaginable that gets on your nerves, such as rustling plastic bags, or nails on chalkboard cranked up to eleven. That song was “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” by John Lennon. I would consider it a successful year if I did not have to hear the whole song to completion, and would actively change the radio station, hum something different, lick a candy cane to a sharp point and jam it in my good ear, whatever would work to survive and endure this feat of hellish tortured circumstance forced upon me.
Fear not, my extreme Grinch tendencies are reformed, as now I respect the simple prose and thought-provoking big ideas John Lennon put forth so many years ago. “So this is Christmas, and what have you done, another year over and a new one just begun.” I had to ask myself why does the apathetic and accusatory self-examination, introspection and judgement the opening line evokes contrasts with the joyful bombastic happiness we expect this time of year? It’s because the contrast is uncomfortable. Instead of outward joy and jubilation it demands something more of us, considering the perpetual speed of the years seems to increase as we get older. Gone are the days of childhood reckless abandon, ping ponging from one festive packaging to the next, with wide-eyed innocence and wonder as sleep deprived parents sit on the couch and take in the joyous memories, they are creating to recall years later spurred on by a photograph, itself changing in colors once bright but now dulled and hazy. Now are the days of independence, parents, getting older, and loss of people near to us either through their passing or relationship changes. Lennon calls for us to examine the faith within ourselves.
Most artists remaster their music some years later and may change things a bit. I think if John Lennon were alive today the song would remain unchanged as the struggles of the time it was written are sadly still opportunities for improvement today in the 2020s. Written in the turbulent and polarizing time of the Vietnam engagement and civil rights movement, a raw 1971 snapshot in time still sadly echoes true today. It’s a report card, and we have not done well these years. Race relations, racial injustice and religious inequality have been a flashpoint of a nation and world that should have come together, now is becoming more deeply divided than ever. There is a lot of fear, as COVID knew no race, or religion, age or political affiliation, or economic standings. The economic inequality will still be present, the rich will get richer as the poor get poorer and the middle class deals with it all. Migration, equal and personal rights and freedoms, intolerance, and human dignities are all sacrificial pawns in a vicious game. Add to this the threat of our democratic political system held captive by a self-serving and self-centered narcissist with insurrectionist tendencies, weaseling his way through denying accountability equates to some tough sledding.
Yet in a song that asks us to ponder inequity from economic standings, geopolitical unrest, and especially racial injustice, it lights a candle of hope in its choral refrain, wishing you a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year, with an optimistic “hope it’s a good one.” A warmth, glowing and longing hope that lies in each of us. A hope to value what is really important and make the right choices. Being with family and cherishing the time we spend together this Christmas though socially and sometimes geographically distanced by miles or by imposed hardships on each other. It’s time to remember and support the families and each other who have lost loved ones. It’s time to silence political and personal divides, find common ground, find tolerance with compassion, and embrace your fellow persons. It’s time to rekindle understanding, peace, love, and tolerance that may have diminished inside us. A time to say you love someone, you miss someone, you care about someone, and you are sorry for the sadness actions may have caused. You never know when you may never see, touch, feel, speak with, and be able to hold a loved one close again. The key to which is in each of us. “War is over if you want it, war is over now.”
And so, Happy Christmas, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and here is to a better new year let’s hope it is a good one without any fears.