Merry little Christmas

This year, I keep coming back to the one that might be most appropriate for Christmas 2020 — “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” The song has a fascinating history and expresses sentiments that, while they may have been forced on us, actually may serve us well in this time and place.

The song, written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, was introduced in the Judy Garland movie “Meet Me In St. Louis,” a 1944 MGM musical that follows the Smith family through the seasons of a single year. At Halloween, the family learns it will be moving to New York City shortly after Christmas, upsetting Garland’s little sister, Tootie. On Christmas Eve, to a fretting Tootie, Garland sings “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” Tootie is not consoled, by the way, and runs outside to destroy a snowman.

What keeps resonating with me are these lines from the original version: “Someday soon, we all will be together/If the fates allow/Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow/So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.”

That’s not the version we hear most commonly. In 1957, Frank Sinatra, recording a Christmas album with the word “jolly” in the title, told lyricist Martin to “jolly up” the song, according to Wikipedia. No more muddling through. Instead, that was replaced by, “Hang a shining star upon the highest bough,” which actually makes little sense lyrically, or, at least, less sense than the original line. But that’s the more common lyric that shows up in most recordings of the song.

Over my lifetime, Christmas has blown up. Home decorations have become increasingly extravagant and widespread. Not that I’m complaining. I like the lights as much as anyone. The Christmas season starts earlier every year, moving from just after Thanksgiving to a point where it is crowding Halloween. Christmas spending, also, has grown in size and urgency, as evidenced by the Black Friday frenzies that we have seen and the extension of Black Friday into days upon days.

That’s all fine and I’m not interested in a cliché laden complaint about the loss of the true meaning. None of this means I’m forbidden to keep Christmas in my own way. And I would not begrudge anyone trying to find a way to squeeze some joy into their lives, no matter how contrived the circumstances.

But, coming back to the “little” song, and not to overstate the obvious, this year is different.

Celebrating holidays in the midst of a pandemic — with urgent warnings about further spreading the disease, with firm admonitions to follow health guidelines of which we all have grown weary — seems hardly like a celebration.

At a time when gatherings of friends and family are most precious to us, we are being invited to stay home, stay away, to forgo so many of those things that make this season meaningful and fulfilling. None of us likes it. Some are choosing, recklessly and selfishly, I must say, to defy it.

We can choose otherwise, however. We can choose to see it as a denial of something fundamental — that all the experts are nothing but spoilsports, that no one can tell us what to do.

Or we can choose to have ourselves a “merry little Christmas.” We can choose to appreciate a roof over our heads and food on the table, as so many others must do without, and to embrace, quietly, as Charles Dickens wrote in “A Christmas Carol,” this “time, of all others, when want is keenly felt and abundance rejoices.”

We can muddle through somehow. We can choose to see, undistracted, and with a gentler and a deeper light. We can celebrate our own steadfastness in the midst of a crisis. We can feel an unforced sense of hope and joy and home. And we can pause, also, over another line from the song: “Faithful friends who are dear to us/Will be near to us once more.”

I wish you well on this eve’s day.

Mark Simon is a veteran journalist, whose career included 15 years as an executive at SamTrans and Caltrain. He can be reached at marksimon@smdailyjournal.com.