Music Monday 36 - Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas?

Most Christmas songs are full of holiday cheer and a festive spirit. Even though we’ve heard them time and time again, Christmas songs can inspire us to really embrace the season.

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of Year can make us believe that Christmas actually is the most wonderful time of the year.

Let it Snow can make us think that it would be a great thing for the heavens to dump 13 feet of snow.

I’ll Be Home for Christmas can make us long to be home for Christmas, in spite of the insanity that comes from family gatherings.

As I’ve been listening to Christmas music this season, I’ve noticed that one song, which should be full of Christmas cheer and merriment, actually isn’t. A song titled Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas should be a lot merrier than it actually is. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas sounds like it’s full of cheer and merriment but it’s actually composed of brokenness and tears.

In the song we’re told to have a merry little Christmas because our troubles are a very real and present reality. These troubles which are not out of sight, these troubles which are not miles away, have been darkening the months leading up to Christmas. But now that it is Christmas, we can be merry and light while making the Yuletide gay.

The song also encourages us to reflect on the “golden days of yore” because the days we are currently living are so much worse than the olden days. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas is like looking through a high school yearbook and thinking that those days were so much better. Instead of inspiring us to be present in this holiday season, it asks us to reflect on the better times of yesterday: like when Wham! was making Christmas hits or Furbies were flying off the shelves.

So be sure to have yourself a merry little Christmas because, according to Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, life is hard and whatever your golden days were, they are much better than today is.

What Christmas song most inspires you for the season?