Christmas is upon us and so is the music and song. “Christmas is coming the goose is getting fat. Won’t you please put a penny in the old man’s hat? If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do. If you haven’t got a ha’penny, God bless you”. That’s a traditional carol I remember singing in grammar school back in the day when such fun was allowed. We sang it as a round.

There have been thousands of songs written about Christmas and the season, some are carols, others are popular songs. They are as diverse as our society - depicting a broad spectrum of belief and experience. Some express the joys of the season while others describe some of the trials and tribulations.

On the not-so-bright-side is Merle Haggard’s “If We Make it Through December”, a poignant song about an unemployed factory worker in which he sings “and my little girl don’t understand why daddy can’t afford no Christmas gift”. In stark contrast is “Jolly Old Saint Nicholas”, a happy song about the gifts that children wish for at Christmas. It was an early celebration in popular song of the commercial side of the season - written before Saint Nicholas became known as Santa Claus.

Over the years there was an intriguing change to the lyric. I grew up singing, “Johnny wants a pair of skates, Suzy wants a sled. Nellie wants a picture book, yellow blue and red”. However, the original words penned by Benjamin Hanby, first published in 1881 (fourteen years after his death) went, “Johnny wants a pair of skates, Susy wants a dolly. Nellie wants a story book, she thinks dolls are folly”. There have been many recordings of the song over the years. The only recording made after 1960 that I am aware of that remains true to the original is by Eddie Arnold. I wonder what precipitated the “update”.

Then there’s the song “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” by Johnny Marks, who wrote a host of popular Christmas songs, including the happier “Rudolph” and “Holly Jolly Christmas”. The lyric to “I Heard the Bells” is an adaptation of a William Wadsworth Longfellow poem written against the backdrop of the Civil War. In December of 1863, two years after the tragic death of his wife, her dress caught fire, Longfellow’s son Charles suffered a bullet wound in the battle of New Hope Church. The famous American poet was nursing him back to health.

As he heard the church bells ringing at Christmas in Cambridge Massachusetts, Longfellow was struck by the dissonance between the Christmas message of “Peace on Earth, good will to men” and the world around him ravaged by the war. It inspired him to write the poem. In it he writes, “And in despair I bowed my head, ‘there is no peace on Earth’, I said. For hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on Earth, good will to men”. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Most Christmas songs and carols are happy. After all, ‘tis the season of giving, of hope and spending time with friends and family. However, it is also the season of stress for those that are struggling.

There’s one carol that became a movie - one of my favorites of all time - the 1951 film adaptation of the Charles Dickens novella, A Christmas Carol, starring Alistair Sim as Ebenezer Scrooge and Mervyn Johns as Bob Cratchit. Dickens had divided the book into five “staves”, as in song stanzas or verses, in keeping with its title. Year after year, at Christmas time I watched it television (sadly, these days it is tougher to find). While it was easy to see why Scrooge was so miserable, it was hard to understand why Cratchit, a man who struggled mightily, along with his family, was so happy. One year - I can’t remember exactly when - it hit me. Bob Cratchit was happy because he chose to be - and I’ve adopted that as a motto to live by - happiness is a choice.

Of course it is easier to make that choice when things are going well. The challenge is to choose to be happy when adversity hits and the struggles begin. For me, that is only possible through Faith. In fact, through Faith, all things are possible.

I wish you all blessings for the season and as Tiny Tim Cratchit said at Christmas dinner in The Christmas Carol, repeated by Dickens at the end of the story, “God bless us everyone”.