I’m no longer Christian, but I love British Christmas carols sung by an English choir group, particularly the religious ones. There’s something about them with sparks memories of home and family; kindled by the stories my mother told me of all the Christmases singing with her English relatives. I met some of them when they were wrinkled and gray, yet they still had a twinkle in their eyes and an energy which was contagious. I adored them upon first acquaintance, seeing the embodiment of merriment my mom described in their conversations and stories.
For Mom, Christmas was all about being merry with these relatives. I cannot watch Albert Finney’s A Christmas Carol without bursting into tears when Scrooge cries, “Old Mr. Fezziwig! He’s alive again!” It’s too easy to imagine seeing some of those relatives returning when reliving one of my mother’s Christmases past.
I get a little of that feeling whenever I hear a British choral group singing God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen. It was as if I could hear my lost relatives in the melody, the lyrics, the timbre of the singers’s voices telling me: You are not alone, even when you are. We live on in you. We enjoy another Christmas, hail another year through you.
My husband isn’t Christian either, but he enjoys Christmas. He likes very different holiday songs than I do, listening to American pop songs on Holly and Jolly stations. They get him into the holiday spirit for gift-giving, decorating, and family visits.
Our tastes intersect over humor; The Twelve Thank You Notes of Christmas; for at times we just need to laugh at how hard it would be a modern home to house all those birds, lords, ladies, milkmaids, and other gifts which may have be a show of pomp and generosity for an aristocrat in centuries past.
How about you, dear reader? Are there holiday songs which you enjoy, inspiring certain memories or ideas?