December’s Music
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by Paul Brophy
It’s December, and that music is here again.
In late November, we celebrate Thanksgiving, pausing to express our gratitude for all that we have. Then comes December, and we get back to our normal state of wanting more all over again. Kids want Santa to bring them toys and goodies. Adults want chestnuts roasting on an open fire, jingle bells, silver bells, sleigh bells and a holly jolly Christmas.
And then there’s the ultimate December wish: a white Christmas.
When Irving Berlin wrote the song about dreaming of a white Christmas, it was 1940, and he was in Los Angeles, longing for the snowy north. He knew he had something special, but even he didn’t understand the depth and breadth of it. Bing Crosby recorded the song in 1942, and it became a big hit: a partnership between the era’s most prolific and popular songwriter and its biggest singer.
The song tugged at the heartstrings of GIs during WWII – the sailors, Marines, nurses and others in the South Pacific and other places far from home.
There was maybe less heartstring tugging for guys like my WWII veteran friend Jack, who threw his boot at the radio while it played the song in the snowy Aleutian Islands, or for the poor souls who were fighting the Battle of the Bulge – their bloody white Christmas.
But it does still tug at the heartstrings of GIs in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere around the globe. Crosby’s version is the biggest-selling single of all time, at more than 50 million copies.
The song endures because it’s our secular hymn about times past. It’s nostalgia for what once was, and for what we imagine might have been, once upon a time. Maybe longing for what never was is the sweetest form of nostalgia.
December captures the wish for a sweet past, real and imagined:
• The year Grandpa gave you a puppy and, because she ate half of your sister’s handcrafted gingerbread house, you named her Ginger.
• That Christmas on the farm when your daughter, on her one-year birthday, walked across the living room all by herself to the cheers of Aunt Harriet and Uncle Will.
• That December walk in the park when he said, “I love you,” and you said, “I love you, too,” and you knew your life had changed forever.
• That Hanukkah in your tiny apartment when you and David were lighting your first menorah, and you put his hand on your tummy to tell him you were pregnant. And, after a brief blank stare, he smiled and said, “I hope it’s a girl and that she’s as beautiful as you.”
• Or that day when you and your new love walked home with your first Christmas tree on a sled, decorated it, drank hot chocolate in front of a fire and listened to George Winston’s December, and you felt the deepest coziness of your life.
All of these are wished-for pasts as well: a little drummer boy, a silent night, angels singing to shepherds, “glory to God in the highest and peace to all on Earth” and a white Christmas.
Berlin captured the primeval gift that December brings to us in its winter darkness, when we yearn for simpler times – more beautiful and more sacred than we can possibly experience in the here and now. We’re not just dreaming of a white Christmas; we’re dreaming of better yesterdays.
Paul Brophy splits his time between Baltimore and Egg Harbor and was a Hal Award winner for photography earlier this year.
“White Christmas”
by Irving Berlin
I’m dreaming of a white Christmas
Just like the ones I used to know
Where the treetops glisten and children listen
To hear sleigh bells in the snow
I’m dreaming of a white Christmas
With every Christmas card I write
May your days be merry and bright
And may all your Christmases be white
I’m dreaming of a white Christmas
Just like the ones I used to know
Where the treetops glisten and children listen
To hear sleigh bells in the snow
I’m dreaming of a white Christmas,
With every Christmas card I write
May your days be merry and bright
And may all your Christmases be white