Christmas Here With You - The Four Tops feat. Aretha Franklin
There’s a lot going on in this song. It opens with twenty seconds of gentle, peaceful piano, then brings in enthusiastic strings and tinkling xylophone, then somehow transforms into a soulful love song, then pauses for spoken greetings to various family members (and my sister Jill! What a great day), then children are shouting, then Aretha Franklin interrupts with a few scattered soprano lines from Christmas carols for some reason (aw, well, damn!), and then a whole chorus begins singing together:
We’re all gathered here, getting ready for some Christmas cheer
Even though I adore this song, I had trouble figuring out what to write about it. Yesterday, I was waiting in a Greyhound station with my brother, and asked him for help, handing over my headphones. He pulled them off halfway through the song. “The earnestness of the care about the Christmas, it’s like it gave me permission to like Christmas more,” he said.
And, yeah, that’s part of what I like about the song. I went through a whole phase in high school of being self-conscious about liking Christmas. It’s not exactly sophisticated to look forward to wrapping paper and brightly lit trees and card games with my family as much as I do. But here, in this song, the joy is so genuine! There’s something contagious in the melodies and phrasing— a pinched feeling suffuses through my chest, and something settles into my shoulders, relaxing them. (I don’t know if that description will mean anything to you; I find it so hard to discretize my inarticulate sensations in words. Do you feel emotions in your body like that?)
My brother squinted thoughtfully. “You know, there’s so much different stuff going on, and music doesn’t really hold together on its own. It works, but it’s only really held together by the Christmas cheer.”
Yeah! Yeah.
It’s cold outside, but I feel warmer than a summer night
‘Cause deep in my heart I know that time has come again
To be with all my family, all gathered ‘round the Christmas tree
And all the love and joy I see- happy Christmas here with you.
I find it hard to feel joy unmingled with longing. I want it to last. I like feeling cheerful, in a simple, unsophisticated way. I think it’s reasonable, even rational, to lean into moments of optimism in the face of the dark world we live in. (The world is much better; the world is awful; the world can be much better.) I don’t expect you to like Christmas as much as me, but I hope that you, too, have songs that fill you, brimming, with cheer.