A song most reflects 2016 X'mas - Have yourself a merry 2017
True, it’s not by Beyoncé or Adele or Rihanna. It’s not even by anyone still alive. But I would like to nominate “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” as song of the year, because if any single tune reflects the miseries of 2016, and the anxious uncertainty with which we greet 2017, it is this 72-year-old holiday chestnut.
The song was introduced by Judy Garland in the 1944 film “Meet Me in St. Louis,” a picture that was itself looking further backward, to the turn of the last century. If this sounds like a Russian nesting doll approach to nostalgia, well, that’s only one facet of the song’s 2016-ness.
Like you, I’ve probably heard “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” dozens of times since Thanksgiving, and hundreds if not thousands of times more across previous holiday seasons. (Mileage will vary depending on how much time you log at Starbucks and CVS.) With its pretty, winding, bittersweet melody, which its co-author likened to a madrigal, and its lyrics about making the best of a rocky present with hopes for a better future, this unusually ambiguous Christmas song falls on the melancholy side of the moody-merry Yuletide music divide (the so-called Guaraldi Line).
To my taste, that is the side to be on, but until last weekend, I hadn’t paid much more attention to “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” than I had to “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” or the odious “Frosty the Snowman.” The occasion was one of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra’s annual Big Band Holidays concerts, where I found tears running down my cheeks during an especially plaintive version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” sung by Catherine Russell and arranged by the tenor saxophonist Victor Goines. Introducing the song, Ms. Russell mentioned that she was going to use its seldom-sung original lyrics, and indeed they proved not only unfamiliar but also — surprising in this generally jolly context — provocative.
New York Times
