“Here we are as in olden days…”
Are we?
In many ways, we are. Christmas rolls around again as it has for centuries. Hasn’t always been so universally celebrated; nevertheless, no one alive in the western hemisphere remembers when it wasn’t celebrated.
The other night, we went for a Christmas lights drive with the grandkids, as we had done with our kids, as our parents did with us in olden days. My wife recalls riding with her parents down “Candy Cane Lane” as a childhood Christmas tradition. Our drives were more random. To be sure, the decorations of the ‘60s pale in comparison to today’s attempts to measure up to the Griswolds—or just the neighbors! But the tradition’s the same.
My mom got some of her Christmas cookie recipes from her mother and mother-in-law; and in my childhood, multiple cookie tins separated the wide assortment of goodies. We have three or four tins on the kitchen counter as I write.
Just after Thanksgiving, dad would load us up to go look for just the right tree—sometimes at a tree farm; mostly at a lot in town. Well, until we succumbed to the modern fake varieties showed up. Fortunately, we never had an aluminum tree with the rotating color wheel! Seriously, that was just weird. Anyway, there hasn’t been a year in our 42 Christmases that we went without a tree. An olden days tradition lives on.
It seems Christmas music—or “holiday music”—is far more ubiquitous today than in my childhood. Over the years as technology has developed and the market has demanded it, the genre has exploded.
It struck me the other day as I heard a pop star singing an old carol that he likely had no clue what the lyrics actually meant, or if he did know, didn’t really believe them. Such is the free market system. Every pop star has at least one “holiday” album. Of course, most of the modern iterations of “holiday” music have nothing to do with Christmas itself, but that’s a topic for another year perhaps.
Anyway, though today has far more holiday music options and media and venues, it exists because Christmas music has been written for centuries. Handel’s Messiah, anyone?
Our grandson recently finished reading the Little House on the Prairie series, and a chapter in one volume stood out—had to do with celebrating Christmas on the harsh frontier. On Christmas morning, the Ingalls kids all received Christmas presents—perhaps a pair of mittens, a single, simply made toy, and some candy. That’s it.
What kids got for Christmas in the olden days differs radically with the comparative haul most kids get these days—supply chain crisis or not. But that gifts are given on Christmas morning is a well-entrenched, very much alive tradition in 2021.
So here we are again.
While I’ve meandered about the perpetuation of Christmas traditions a bit, that’s not what really grabbed my attention when I heard Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas last week. Don’t ask me who was singing it—could’ve been any one of a hundred pop singers from the last 80 years!
What hit me were these lines:
“Next year, all our troubles will be out of sight…”
“Next year, all our troubles will be miles away…”
“Through the years we all will be together…”
I discovered that the song was written in the 1940’s, the first recording sung by Wizard of Oz star Judy Garland in 1944. Put the above lines in that historical context. The world was in the throes of World War II. Thousands of soldiers had already perished in that war. Thousands were far from home, on battlefields in Europe or on ships at sea in the Pacific.
It was a time when troubles were in every living room; families were separated by uncrossable miles.
Hence the longing expressed in the lyrics. Understandable, no?
But here’s the thing. That song has been sung every year for nearly eight decades, and the longing remains unsatisfied.
Every year, countless people whose lives are steeped in trouble look longingly at their Christmas tree, listen nostalgically to the holiday music wafting from their stereo—or cell phone—and hope, maybe now all our troubles will be out of sight…miles away from our door.
Sadly, many don’t get through Christmas day without trouble breaking down the door. No one escapes it for long.
“We all will be together?” Has that ever come true two years in a row, let alone “through the years”?
I look out at our church congregation on Sunday morning past, at the sea of faces. Some weren’t in our church a year ago. Some who were are gone.
The same could be said for our family Christmas celebration. While we find joy in our gathering, especially in new additions to the family, some faces are missing this year…and some will be every year from here on out.
Admittedly, the lyricists added the caveat “…if the fates allow….” But clearly the hope is that they will. They never do.
Yet, next Christmas the crooners will croon the same mournful lyrics to the same longing listeners.
Pardon me if I sound cynical or overly critical. I don’t mean to be. But Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas will always end in disappointment “through the years.”
Sure, we’ll do all we can to be lighthearted and “make the yuletide gay.” And we can find a measure of pleasure reminiscing about the “happy golden days of yore.”
But there’s no point deluding ourselves, buying into the notion this Christmas will be the end of all our troubles and mark the beginning of perpetual re-gatherings with “faithful friends who are dear to us.” It’s simply not going to be in this life—the “fates” won’t allow it.
However….
Not all is so bleak and hopeless and melancholy! After all, Christmas has come!
When the true meaning and purpose of Christmas are understood, and the Savior born in the city of David is believed in, trusted, and truly depended upon for the soul’s salvation, the lyrics from the song can be sung with genuine hope and expectation—just not for this life.
The promise of Christmas held out for those who trust this Savior is that upon passing through death’s door, “from now on our troubles will be out of sight” and “miles away.” I know I’ve shared the passage before, but it bears repeating because this is what Christmas anticipates:
“Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
– Revelation 21:3-4
And through the eons of eternity, all who are God’s children—those who have received His gift of eternal life through Jesus—will be together. Not because “the fates allow” it, but because God has decreed it!
For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.
– 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17
For those who rely on nothing but the fates, I suppose Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas is about the best they can do to try stirring up a semblance of hope.
But the Christian has far more. At the conclusion of the passage quoted above, Paul the Apostle wrote,
Therefore, encourage one another with these words.
– 1 Thessalonians 4:18
So, Christian, you may have some troubles that just won’t go away, others that are on the way, and you may be missing some friends or loved ones at your Christmas gatherings this year. Nevertheless, be encouraged and have a Merry Christmas!
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