A Very Merry Christmas to You (have a song)

We are having a really busy holiday season, but trying to enjoy the ride. Hopefully we manage to slow down enough to enjoy the family and friend time. I was listening to the Harmontown podcast last week and Dan and Jeff were talking about Christmas music, and about how the songs that really stuck out to them were the gloomy ones with sad undertones. The Vince Guaraldi Trio's Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack, for example. And "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" -- which is overall a hopeful and sentimental song, but its original lyrics allude to the willful ignorance with which we approach the season. Forgetting of the rest of the year when we all concede ourselves, our schedules, our time, our energy to the pursuits of comfortable survival. We have to do what we have to do, and it usually means spending lots of time away from our loved ones. Christmas is the season when we all find the strength/courage/bravado to lock those things in a closet, just for a day or two, and be with people we care about. Even if that means your family across the country, coworkers at a bar, or friends around a fire.

I'm looking forward to another Christmas as a new, developing little family, forming our own traditions and celebrations of goodness, family, humanity, and redemption at the winter solstice of every coming year.

Here's to many more.