A few years back, I was reading on the BBC website and I saw something that reallr surprised me.
It was a survey of the greatest Christmas songs ever, and at the top of the list was a song I had never heard.
In modern Britain, “Fairytale of New York” by the Pogues and Kirsty McColl is the gold standard, even though it includes such non-seasonal word like drunk tank, slut, maggot and faggot.
It’s the story of a man and a woman on Christmas Eve. They’re much closer to the end than to the beginning and they have a million regrets. Their Christmas Past is a dream, Christmas Present is a nightmare and Christmas Yet to Come doesn’t exist.
They did have a past together.
“They’ve got cars big as bars, they’ve got rivers of gold but the wind goes right through you, it’s no place for the old. When you first took my hand on a cold Christmas Eve, you promised me Broadway was waiting for me.
“You were handsome, you were pretty, Queen of New York City, when the band finished playing they howled out for more. Sinatra was swinging, all the drunks they were singing, we kissed on a corner then danced through the night.
“The boys of the NYPD choir were singing Galway Bay and the bells were ringing out for Christmas day.”
It’s definitely a different sort or Christmas carol. No talk about the happiest time of the year, no mention of Santa Claus or gifts, no mention of Jesus or the Nativity. I fact, it’s a song about people who have long since lost the joy in the holidays.
Once you’re grown and on your own, there are so many things that can take the joy from Christmas. I had two or three nice holidays in my 20s and no more than two in my 30s. In most of those years, I didn’t have anyone to give gifts to.
Starting when I was 43, I had children and then grandchildren. That was very nice. but since we moved to Georgia in November 2010, we have only decorated for Christmas once or twice.
As much as anything, we send gifts to our children and grandchildren and then do little or nothing here.
I think I’ve reached a point in my life when I understand Shane McGowan of the Pogues singing, “I could have been someone,” and Kirsty McColl responding, “Well so could anyone.”
I’m not quite at the point where I would sing, “Happy Christmas your arse, I pray God it’s our last,” but I hardly look forward to wonderful family Christmases.
My parents are dead, I have four siblings with whom we haven’t all been in the same place since 2008 and I think the last time Nicole and I, our children and grandchildren were all in the same place on Christmas Day was 2009 (and there was only one grandchild then).
Yes, it’s a different world.
I just don’t think there really is a most wonderful time of the year anymore.