So many Christmas songs, but this is always one of my most favorite of them all. Harlem Community Choir in the background! 1971! Of course it was about the Vietnam War, but this song is surely timeless as long as man is killing his fellow man in war, which is sure to go on until I die and quite clearly long after that.
There is something truly joyous about this song. I am not sure quite it is, but that’s the “can’t put a finger on it” quality that all great art has. With songs like this, you are thinking, “If there’s a Heaven, you know they must play this song up there.” And how could they not?
And of course, wishing all of my readers, lovers and haters, the right, the wrong and the indifferent, the good, the bad and the ugly, all of you tired sailors splashing in from the rain, in your gilded, ragged humanity, from one gleaming eye to another uplifted chin, all of you, every one, a very Merry Christmas, and as we stumble forward, half-blind but singing in the wind anyway because Oh Hell why not, a Happy New Year.