This Christmas - Pink Sweat$ and Donny Hathaway
This is a delightful and subtle rework of one of my favourite Christmas songs. The unvarnished simple joy of my world is filled with cheer… and you. The way the trumpets blare after and this Christmas will be a very special Christmas for me. Pink Sweat$ said when he was cleared to include Donny Hathaway’s original 1970 vocals on his version, he thought, “how did I ever get so lucky?” and I feel like you can hear him having grateful fun in the harmonies.
This Christmas is a love song, but I like how the lyrics emphasize simple pleasures, how much fun it’s going to be together doing fairly unremarkable Christmas tasks like trimming the tree. Not longing to meet a crush for a kiss under the mistletoe, but hang all the mistletoe / I’m gonna get to know / you better. It evokes companionate love, something described in the Triangular Theory of Love (formulated by Robert Sternberg in 1986, and apparently a “prominent theoretical concept in empirical research on love”). The theory posits three components of love: intimacy (liking and feeling connected to someone), passion (desire and physical attraction), and commitment (remaining with someone and moving towards shared goals). These three can be combined in various ways, and companionate love is when you have intimacy and commitment without passion.
I’ve been thinking a lot about romantic companionship and compatibility this year, in part because, as my friend Cody remarked, “it feels like we got out of the pandemic and everyone was thirty and suddenly dating had this Jane Austen veneer where we’re all like oh, I do hope I shall find a good match for marriage”. I’d guess this is mostly about babies (such hullabaloo!) since your real biological clock is you’re going to die (also referenced in a 2020 countdown) and, in a more traditional definition of that clock, I expect conceiving and carrying a healthy baby to become increasingly physically difficult for me as I move through my thirties. I think a lot of my peers are feeling a similar urgency; even those who are ambivalent about kids seem concerned that their most appealing potential partners will end up committed elsewhere.
One axis of compatibility that I think about is what I’ve termed the Wednesday Factor, which is: when you and your partner picture an ordinary (but very pleasant) Wednesday night, what does it look like? Are you at home or out and about? Are you companionably doing your own thing, or focused on each other, or together with a larger group of friends / family? A high Wednesday Factor seems convenient, though I don’t think the vision has to overlap entirely for two people to be highly compatible. The second time Zach visited me in California, they were like, “I cannot go out and do activities every night this week, please hang out with your friends so I can stay home and catch up on Anki and writing” and I think we both had a nicer time as a result. People can become more compatible through conversation and cheerful compromise.
Do you have (or are you looking for) someone to experience loving companionship with? What are the ways you like to spend time with the people you love?
Hoping you’ve had a very special Christmas,
- Tessa