For the last couple of weeks I have written about traditions and their importance for the holidays. Today I am thinking about the song, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”
The first time I remember really hearing the lyrics to the song was when I was in college. I was home with my parents. At the time they were going through a very tough period and it was a far from joyous holiday. They lived in suburban D.C. then. It was Christmas Eve, raining and we went to a sad little restaurant for lunch. I heard the song and it resonated so deeply with the mood I was experiencing. Though no one said it, I knew each of us was hoping that the next year all their troubles would be out of sight.
The song comes from the movie, “Meet Me in St. Louis” with Judy Garland who of course sings it. It happens that this movie is one of my daughter’s all time favorites so I have seen it many times. It’s not the song that most people remember from the movie — “The Trolley Song” is the one most people associate with it.
So many of the songs we hear and sing to celebrate this season are about joy and celebration, but his one and one other, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” stand out because they strike a different note — one of sadness. Not coincidently both songs came out during WW II.
Here are the lyrics, as sung by Judy Garland, in the movie and try to see them in the context of our current situation. In 1944, when the movie came out, the future was very uncertain and many were separated from loved ones, a situation not unlike ours today.
“Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Let your heart be light,
Next year all our troubles will be out of sight.
Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Make the Yuletide gay,
Next year all our troubles will be miles away.
Once again as in olden days,
Happy golden days of yore,
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Will be near to us once more.
Some day soon 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.”
~Hugh Martin
The circumstances in which we are living — over 315,000 people in the US dead from the virus as of this writing– and our anxiety about its spread, the admonitions to avoid travel and to stay at home, seem so similar to the mood my parents talked about of WW II. Last weekend my husband and I drove to where my adult children live to drop off their Christmas gifts. It was a chance to get out of the house, something we both needed. And it was wonderful to see them. But as we drove away from my daughter and her husband, I felt an ache — the ache of having been able to see them, talk with them for a bit outdoors, separated by distance and masks and unable to do the natural hug and touch that is so much a part of being with family. My whole body ached from that necessary distance.
My son and his family, my daughter and her husband, and I and my husband — we all have Christmas trees decorated with ornaments accumulated over the years. Each one conjures up memories of Christmases past, times when we could be together and laugh and hug and be with each other. This year it seems especially important to honor those traditions in every way that we can given the limitations COVID-19 has imposed. This evening my husband and I will choose one of the many Christmas movies out this year and watch it and I will talk with him about what it was like when my kids were little. Tomorrow we will virtually gather together via Zoom. We will open presents. Laugh. Enjoy what we can and do our best to muddle through and have a merry little Christmas now.
I wish for you, whatever your traditions around this time of year — whether Christmas or Solstice or Hanukkah or just winter — that you immerse yourselves in them. That you, as I and my family will, hold on the hope that next year we really will all be able to be together, that fates will indeed allow that. And for this year, like me, you will muddle through. Celebrate being alive. Share love and kindness. And if the sadness and stress and worry become too much, reach out. You can find me via email. And I will be here.
Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!