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| I love holiday music! So I've created a playlist of all the holiday songs I've recorded to date. I'll be adding more with time! |
| If YouTube asks you to sign in to prove you're not a bot, use the playlist player below instead. Pressing a particular song in the player below will start the playlist playing at that song. Pressing "q" will pause, pressing "p" will start playing again. |
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Have Yourself LINKS ABOUT THIS SONG release date of this version: December 19, 2023 length: 3 min 49 sec music: Hugh Martin lyrics: Ralph Blane vocals: Chris Tong karaoke arrangement: Sing King Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas is one of my favorite Christmas songs. For me (starting with Judy Garland's original film version), it has always been an emotion-filled song, by turns joyful, playful, nostalgic, and wistful — so that is how I sing it here. The karaoke arrangement is based on Michael Bublé's version. LYRICS HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS Have yourself ADDITIONAL NOTES That wistfulness. On the surface, the words of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas are purely joyful — "faithful friends" coming together each year in a joyous Christmas celebation. And yet one of the emotions I feel when I sing this song is wistfulness. So where is the wistfulness coming from? It's that big "IF" in the song: "if the fates allow". In fact, as every one of us knows (more and more, with each passing year) — those singing this song and those listening to it — fate only allows such reunions for a limited number of years. As I sing this song, I have a vision of a photograph of a gathering of friends, from a Christmas many years ago, and how, one by one over the years, each face in the photograph turns "ghostly", either through our circumstances no longer being shared (high school, college, living nearby), or our life paths having moved in different directions, or the passing on of that person. My awareness of that inevitable reality is the source of the wistfulness and nostalgia. Celebrating even in the midst of an ever-changing world. The joy and playfulness of the song comes from the celebration we can still have together, even in the midst of an ever-changing universe. One of my favorite quotes is this prayer from the spiritual teacher, Adi Da:
Let us surrender into Infinity with all our friends and hold on to no thing or condition that ever appears. Let us forget all things in present Happiness, and so forgive the universe for all its playful changes. Let us always love one another, and so forgive one another for appearing, for changing, and for passing out of present sight. So be it.
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