\n<\/p>\n
This is an edition of\u00a0\u00a0The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.<\/p>\n
Christmas has always made me nostalgic, but I have come to realize, with something of a jolt\u2014 perhaps because I just turned 65\u2014that my sense of nostalgia is not what it used to be. When I was younger, I happily got all wistful when hearing Johnny Mathis or Perry Como because I would think of my parents and the Christmases I knew as a little kid. My folks were still around, and it didn\u2019t seem all that long ago that I was hoping to find new accessories for my beloved Captain Action doll under the tree.<\/p>\n
When you\u2019re very young, you\u2019re enveloped in the memories and traditions of the adults around you. But my parents have been gone for many years, and the house I grew up in, where my mother would lovingly tape every Christmas card to the walls, has changed hands at least twice since their passing. So I now find myself comforted less by the songs of my childhood and more by the music I came to love as a teen and young adult\u2014just like my parents did in the 1960s, when they were dreaming about the 1940s. I now want to remember my contemporaries, not those of my parents. Perhaps that\u2019s how time and memory work; I still have fond recollections of my childhood, but I also have a kind of newer nostalgia.<\/p>\n
So yes, when I hear Vince Guaraldi, I still think of being bundled up in my pajamas with a mug of hot chocolate and A Charlie Brown Christmas. But if you look at my Spotify list of Christmas songs, you\u2019ll see that these days I am truly nostalgic not for Percy Faith but for \u2026 Billy Joel and the Alarm. I will always love Judy Garland\u2019s \u201cHave Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,\u201d but think of this: In 2025, we are now as far away from the Waitresses\u2019 \u201cChristmas Wrapping\u201d as we were from Meet Me in St. Louis when I was in college back in the early 1980s.<\/p>\n
My list does not include a hundred versions of \u201cLast Christmas\u201d and the earworm known as \u201cAll I Want for Christmas Is You.\u201d Allow me to offer something a little more, ah, idiosyncratic.<\/p>\n
\u201cChristmas Wrapping,\u201d released in 1981, has become a charmingly offbeat holiday mainstay for decades. It shouldn\u2019t work at all as a holiday song. It\u2019s a tale of harried urban singledom\u2014with an admittedly happy ending\u2014half-sung and half-rapped by the late Patty Donahue in her trademark flat-affect voice. When I was in college, the first jingle-jingles of \u201cChristmas Wrapping\u201d on Boston\u2019s FM stations meant that school was done, and that I was going to go home to see my family. The song has always marked, for me, the beginning of the season.<\/p>\n
The rest of my list, however, isn\u2019t very upbeat. (Notable exception: \u201cChristmas Won\u2019t Be the Same Without You,\u201d a great 2008 sing-along by the Plain White T\u2019s and proof that I listen to a few things from this century.) In fact, most of these songs are rather melancholy. Perhaps the theme among them is something I try to remember at Christmas: \u201cThere but for the grace of God go I.\u201d<\/p>\n
Greg Lake, of the group Emerson, Lake & Palmer, didn\u2019t really mean to write a Christmas song when he released \u201cI Believe in Father Christmas\u201d in 1975. Lake\u2019s song, composed with lyricist Peter Sinfield, laments the loss of his childhood wonder at the holiday; he describes feeling betrayed because \u201cthey said there\u2019ll be snow at Christmas \u2026 \/ But instead it just kept on raining.\u201d I get that feeling; I am a man of faith who nonetheless knows that Christ was not born on December 25, who no longer believes in Santa Claus, and who feels mournful when it rains on Christmas.<\/p>\n
\u201cCircle of Steel,\u201d a 1974 song by Gordon Lightfoot, is also lovely but depressing. Lightfoot tells three stories of inner-city Christmas despair, as reminders that life is a roulette wheel\u2014a circle of steel\u2014where many lose, and the rest of us should count our blessings. More than a decade later, Sir Bob Geldof, co-writer Midge Ure, and a bevy of top British and Irish artists collectively recording as the group Band Aid would do the same with a song titled \u201cDo They Know It\u2019s Christmas?\u201d<\/p>\n
Ironically, the people who made \u201cDo They Know It\u2019s Christmas?\u201d aren\u2019t crazy about it, despite the song\u2019s success in raising money at the time for famine-stricken Ethiopia. \u201cIt\u2019s not a great song,\u201d Ure said in 2014. \u201cHad we known it would end up side-by-side with \u2018Silent Night\u2019 and \u2018White Christmas\u2019 we\u2019d have tried to write a better track.\u201d Geldof said in 2010 that it was one of the \u201cworst songs in history,\u201d but he has since softened his view, noting a \u201cguileless innocence\u201d that resulted in something that is \u201cso English, spotty, scruffy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Geldof, Ure, and Band Aid created a brutal, if melodic, reminder that in some places, Christmas bells are the \u201cclanging chimes of doom,\u201d and not everyone is choosing between turkey and ham while drinking good wine and exchanging expensive gifts. \u201cTonight,\u201d the Irish singer Bono, of U2, howls, \u201cthank God it\u2019s them instead of you.\u201d<\/p>\n
I have a special affection for the song because I bought it as a 12-inch-vinyl single in 1985 and discovered a gem on the other side: A long version with all of the stars wishing you (as the British say) a happy Christmas, including a gentle remonstration about world hunger from David Bowie. Sure, I have some quibbles with it: For one thing, Ethiopia, the epicenter of the 1984 famine, is a nation with a large population of my fellow Orthodox Christians, so yes, they did in fact know it was the Christmas season. But even I am not enough of a curmudgeon to dislike a Christmas song that wraps a classic Brit-pop sound and the instantly recognizable drumming of Phil Collins around bushels of real sincerity.<\/p>\n
Other songs on my list, I admit, make for oddball listening. \u201cSnoopy\u2019s Christmas\u201d was a goofy but adorable\u2014and extremely catchy\u2014novelty hit by the Royal Guardsmen in 1967, in which our canine pal encounters the \u201cRed Baron\u201d in combat on Christmas Eve, and instead of fighting, they enjoy a chivalrous truce.<\/p>\n
The thing is, such truces did happen in World War I, so after you smile at Snoopy, listen to \u201cChristmas in the Trenches,\u201d a 1984 song by the American folk singer John McCutcheon. McCutcheon\u2019s gentle ballad opens with British and German troops hearing each other as they sing carols in their trenches while celebrating Christmas. Soon\u2014as actually happened in some places during the Great War\u2014they tentatively venture out into no-man\u2019s-land to shake hands, \u201cshare some secret brandy,\u201d and play soccer by flare-light. As morning comes and the war resumes, the men return to their trenches but wonder: \u201cWhose family have I fixed within my sights?\u201d<\/p>\n
You might notice that my list includes some real clunkers. Why did I include \u201cWonderful Christmastime,\u201d by Paul McCartney? (Because it was released during my first year of college; that\u2019s why. I know it\u2019s terrible. Shut up.) The sticky gunk from Neil Diamond and Faith Hill is there because I\u2019m old enough that even the 1990s can trigger nostalgia. And I have to listen to the boys from South Park do \u201cMerry F**king Christmas\u201d as a kind of palate cleanser now and then, despite my wife\u2019s exasperated sighs.<\/p>\n
I hope that whatever your faith or tradition, this season you find some joy, and that you take a moment\u2014as the young people in Band Aid sang so long ago\u2014to \u201cpray for the other ones\u201d and remember our common responsibility to them. I know this has been a tough year, but remember, as Judy Garland promised us in 1942: \u201cLet your heart be light,\u201d and hope, as we always do, that \u201cnext year, all our troubles will be out of sight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Merry Christmas.<\/p>\n
Related:<\/p>\n
Evening Read<\/strong><\/p>\n Jakub Porzycki \/ NurPhoto \/ Getty<\/p>\n What I Lost When I Gave Up My Catholicism<\/p>\n By Xochitl Gonzalez<\/p>\n Few experiences in modern life are as wondrous as a really good Christmas Vigil Mass. It\u2019s a full sensory encounter: the sight of the chapel, decked out for the holidays; the smell of the incense; the sound of the choir singing \u201cAdeste Fideles\u201d or \u201cHark! The Herald Angels Sing\u201d; the taste of the Communion wafer; the heavy feel of the chalice when you sip your Communion wine. The message, every year, is that no matter the state of the world, goodness can be born anew.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t remember the last time that I let myself experience this.<\/p>\n Read the full article.<\/p>\n More From The Atlantic<\/em><\/p>\n Culture Break<\/p>\n Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Lauren Puente \/ AFP \/ Getty.<\/p>\n Examine. Why did we ever watch To Catch a Predator? A new documentary (streaming on Paramount+) probes the influential Dateline series\u2014and the titillating nature of true crime itself, Sophie Gilbert writes.<\/p>\n Listen. Growing up, Anna Holmes\u2019s holidays were profoundly shaped by the sound of a Charlie Brown Christmas.<\/p>\n Play our daily crossword.<\/p>\n Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.<\/p>\n When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting <\/em>The Atlantic.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is an edition of\u00a0\u00a0The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Christmas has always made me nostalgic, but I have come to realize, with something of a jolt\u2014 perhaps because I<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39015,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[1671,9342,21244,1138],"class_list":{"0":"post-39014","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-atlantic","9":"tag-christmas","10":"tag-idiosyncratic","11":"tag-playlist"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}