I have written a number of times of my fondness for bittersweet portrayals of Christmas. I guess that always feels natural to me. Who needs the constant pressure of merry? And as much of an optimist as I am, I also tend to assume that some things are going to go wrong. Death is inevitable Entropy is built into the system.
Yeah, merry friggin’ Christmas to me…
Anyway, I mentioned “White Christmas” the other day, but I forgot to link to this recent story in the NY Times about Irving Berlin, who wrote one of the most famous Christmas songs of all time.
Note this:
While swimming confidently toward their goal, his songs frequently pass through invisible seams of sadness on the way. Think of how wistful even “White Christmas” is. Underneath the last, sustained word of the climactic lyric “May your days be merry and bright,” Berlin gives us an F-major chord that turns suddenly, piercingly minor. The brightness is literally diminished, as the dream of the past is diminished by time.
Berlin came by this sentiment honestly. His father, a cantor in whose temple he first heard the way music can recapitulate loss in the flick of a note, died when he was 13. His first wife died of typhoid fever contracted on their Cuban honeymoon. Irving Berlin Jr., his son by his second wife, died on Christmas Eve at three weeks.
And of course the song is about dreaming of a white Christmas, because you’re not going to get one. It’s as though the singer tells you “may your days be merry and bright,” because his aren’t and won’t be.
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The Pop View » A Wistful View of Christmas Says:
[...] I noted a couple years ago, “White Christmas,” one of the most popular Christmas songs of the [...]