Christmas Music and Memories

Isn't it crazy how much a song can evoke a memory? You hear a few bars and you are instantly taken back to a specific point in your life's story. I find this particularly true with Christmas music. I am such a sucker for the stuff, and am always super emotional around the holidays thinking about tender memories from childhood and the birth of the baby that changed the world. Here are a few of my favorites...

 

"Welcome to our World": UGH! This song gets me every time. I am instantly taken back to sitting in Holy Cross Church where we went growing up. They did the most beautiful version of this song at Christmas Eve Mass. The air in the church would be so full of warmth and joy and gratitude that you could just feel it (Holy Spirit, much?) This song captures so well that we are broken people and so in need of Christ's compassion, but it brings me a huge sense of peace knowing that He chose to come. Singing "welcome to our world" with this song feels like a personal reminder to me to invite Him into my life.

 

Bring Your peace into our violence
Bid our hungry souls be filled
Word now breaking Heaven's silence

Welcome to our world

 

 

"The Christmas Song": It has to be the Nat King Cole version- nobody else comes close. This one takes me back to the house I grew up in on Townley Circle and decorating the Christmas tree. We always played the Nat King Cole Christmas album while decorating the tree and this song was my favorite. This event always signaled that Christmas was actually here and kicked off the season. What a gift it is to get to place those ratty, horrible, handmade ornaments you had so proudly presented to your parents as a tot onto the tree each year. We always knew that they would make their appearance each December, but it remained funny year after year to pull them out and show them to everyone (and it still is). My giant soldier face and angel with larger than life lips are worthy of special mention.

 

And so I'm offering this simple phrase

To kids from one to ninety-two

Although it's been said many times

Many ways, Merry Christmas to you

 

 

"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas": This one has to be the Judy Garland version. It's a bittersweet tune as it takes me back to the first Christmas after losing my cousin. It came on the radio in my navy blue Ford Explorer and when the line below played, I had to pull off of the road because I was crying so hard. This song, for me, epitomizes the dichotomy of the holidays where there is such immense joy that it makes you want to be with the ones you love, and how incredibly painful it is when you don't have that option.

 

Through the years we all will be together, if the fates allow

Until then we'll have to muddle through somehow

So have yourself a merry little Christmas now

 

 

"Deck the Halls": Whenever I hear this song, I don't think of the song as it was intended to sound, but rather how it was interpreted by a group of waiters at a Chinese restaurant in the movie "A Christmas Story". Fa ra ra ra ra trumps fa la la la la any day, in my book. Every Christmas Eve after church, my family would gather together and watch this movie over and over until we went to sleep. Nothing says Christmas like the Red Ryder BB Gun, poor Ralphie and his shot out eye, and the Bumpuses' dogs.

 

Tis the season to be jorry,

Fa ra ra ra ra, ra ra ra ra

 

 

Christmas is definitely my favorite time of the year as I get to re-live all of these memories and prepare to honor the birth of Jesus. I hope that others are as blessed as I am to have such special moments to look back on.