The time between Thanksgiving and New Years was the best
time of the year when I was young. Everything seemed perfect. Even though there
were problems in the world, they did not impose any worries on us. Even when we didn’t have much, we had plenty
to eat and too many presents for our own good.
Now this season for me is what some people call
“bitter-sweet,” a time of joyful thanksgiving edged with a layer of melancholy.
So many loved-ones, friends and family, gone now or scattered far and wide, the kids all grown, and the
grandsons growing up too fast.
Some Christmas songs are hard to listen to for long,
like Johnny Mathis singing “The Christmas Song” or “Sleigh Ride.” He was one of
my mother’s favorite singers. She played his Christmas records throughout
December. Hearing his voice and those songs takes me back 50 years to foggy
Christmases in Huntington Beach, CA. She has been gone for ten years, and I still miss
her. My dad at age 90 thinks she is still around.
Other seasonal songs I love but can’t listen to very much
are “The Christmas Waltz,” by Peggy Lee, one of my dad’s favorites, and Bing
Crosby’s “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” I haven’t the faintest notion of why
they inspire melancholy in my little brain, but they certainly do. I just must
have a morbid temperament. Or it could be my annual fall-winter light deprivation depression kicking in. Oh well, Happy Thanksgiving.
