"I don't want a lot for Christmas
There is just one thing I need
I don't care about the presents underneath the Christmas tree
I just want you for my own
More than you could ever know
Make my wish come true
All I want for Christmas is you
Yeah"
The song is about longing. Most popular Christmas songs are.
Maria Carey and Walter Afanasieff produced a holiday themed studio album in 1995. "All I want for Christmas is you" was an immediate hit. It is the number one song on the music charts in late November for the past five years.
The song is a mix of upbeat seasonal joy plus longing and heartache -- the magical combination for a Christmas song. As the Hallmark people know well, there is deep sentiment about Christmas. Be home for Christmas, if only in one's dreams. In Hallmark Christmas movies, the dream comes true.
Irving Berlin's White Christmas won the Academy Award for best song in 1942. Bing Crosby released the song as a single in 1947 and it became the largest selling single record ever sold. World War Two separated people from home and family. Crosby dreamed of a Christmas "just like the ones I used to know."
As a young child I learned the story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and sang the song Gene Autry made popular in 1949, when it was a number one hit. Playmates can be cruel. They might not appreciate a reindeer child. But then Christmas magic: When others discover the little reindeer is special after all.
Robert Wells and Mel Torme wrote The Christmas Song in 1945. The song is better known as "Chestnuts Roasting over an Open Fire." Nat King Cole sang it in 1946. His versions remain the gold standard. It is a list of sentimental touchstones: Chestnuts, yuletide carols, turkey, Santa, mistletoe, and tiny tots with eyes all aglow.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is not a Christmas story, but he captured Christmas sentiment of longing for a remembered past. Christmas is a happy time for children. But then we grow up and realize that the past is unrecoverable. That longed-for past of real and imagined Christmases elude us, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther, until, maybe, one fine morning -- one fine Christmas morning.
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
As Maria Carey sings: Make my wish come true. . . .
Great little Christmas essay, especially the Gatsby quote. Thanks.
Merry Christmas Peter!