After previewing a few of the latest modern Christmas songs I found myself a bit inspired. For once, the pop and pomp of the latest holiday tunes felt refreshing - like some of the new artists had actually attempted to be original. I found myself curious to know if writing a Christmas song was difficult or not. And as it turns out, it’s exceedingly hard. I found myself with 88 keys and a lack luster holiday dirge. I’ll break that down into two key thoughts.
First off - it’s been said many times, many ways. The scope of possible themes and ideas surrounding Christmas are fairly narrow. Buckets exist, such as the holiday home bucket, or the rudolf bucket, and the vast majority of Christmas songs fit neatly into those minus a few exceptions. I wanted to be original, but I found myself slipping rather quickly into one bucket after the other. Ultimately, I found myself squarely in the “Christmas lights” bucket. But hey, I made it sad, so there’s that. All in a lovely tune of D-flat, here’s where I got to:
If its Christmas time and you’ve been on your own
And the twinkle lights just barely seem to glow
And the snow just isn’t melting like it used to
And the ice is freezing deeper than it should
If you’re wondering what you should hold on to
I’d love it if you would sing along
Sad, but… hopeful? I got stumped at this point, which brings me to point two: what’s the point? Christmas songs have an awesome way of brightening dark months, and it’s a shame we don’t push their magic into January a bit more. (But for real, why are we trying to invade November instead of January?) I was missing originality and missing a happy message. So I just lingered in the sad a little bit more, but tried to uplift the message a bit with the start of my chorus.
It’s okay to be alone
This time, These lights can be mine,
I can fight to be a light
To keep shining out into the night
Because we’re all on this strand together
And if one of us falls who knows all the others
That may go dark
And just like that, I had done it. I had successfully failed to make my song any happier. It was encouraging, but the encouragement it provided was to stave off a greater doom. Keep trucking so that other people aren’t hurt. At this point that I decided to scrap my attempt at a Christmas Song and admit that there is likely a reason no one has created a new “Christmas Classic” since Mariah Carey. And even she was amongst the rare few modern artists of her era. Writing Christmas songs is hard! What’s classic is classic, and there really isn’t much reason for more.
What was it about the 40s, 50s, and 60s that had made such a lasting Christmas magic? Marketing? A more prosperous era? Real winters without global warming?
Moral of the story is, I gave up. And that’s okay. Some questions are better left alone, but it felt great to experiment a bit. It did feel good, however, to remind myself that we really are all on this strand together. One light going out affects all the others and many down the line. The Christmas magic can hum through all of us if we let it.
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