Melancholy Songs for Christmas

Last Wednesday, with three more days until I could go home for Christmas, I listened to "I'll Be Home for Christmas" over and over on Hype Machine--by Frank Sinatra, by Mindy Smith, by Bing Crosby (my favorite is Banu Gibson and the New Orleans Hot Jazz). "I'll be home for Christmas...if only in my dreams." Lines like that are more poignant than singing about bells and Rudolph. And they are more real. Melancholy Christmas songs are wonderful, I have decided. Here are some I've been listening to.

John Lennon: Happy Christmas (War is Over)

"So this is Christmas--and what have you done? Another year over, a new one just begun..."
I panicked just a little when I heard this over the radio: wait, what have I done? But then I stopped and thought about it, and I am satisfied with the past year. Some of the I did...

got a penny whistle started a blog made new friends

ate melon for the first time saw the Eiffel Tower sculpted

road-tripped to Nebraska roasted two turkeys wrote a research

paper listened to music silk-screened died my hair

Diana Krall: Departure Bay

The house was bare of Christmas lights

It came down hard that year

Outside in our overcoats

Drinking down to the bitter end

Trying to make things right

Like my mother did.

I'm Dreaming of Home

I watched the movie Joyeux Noël last night, about the Christmas Truce between German and British forces--about how they came out of the trenches and sang; exchanged drinks, chocolate, cigarettes; buried the dead. A story about a miracle.

Scottish forces are depicted in the film, crouched in their trench around a meal. Someone has bagpipes, and someone asks to hear "I'm Dreaming of Home." They start singing:

This is no foreign sky

I see no foreign light

But far away am I

In some peaceful land, I'm longing to stand...

I'm dreaming of home, I feel so alone

I'm dreaming of home.