Have Yourself
a Merry Little Christmas

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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.

HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS

Have yourself
a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
From now on our troubles
will be out of sight

Have yourself
a merry little Christmas
Make the Yuletide gay
From now on our troubles
will be miles away.

Here we are as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us once more

Through the years
we all will be together
If the fates allow
Hang a shining star
upon the highest bough
And have yourself
a merry little Christmas now.

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: