We’re about a week out from Christmas. For those who have been around my site for a while, this is when I generally start revisiting old favorites, maybe with new versions or videos, or maybe not. This song is required for me this time of year. I know that some people find it cheesy or corny, and some others don’t think it’s particularly a Christmas song other than the fact that its events are said to happen on Christmas Eve, but for me this song is absolutely a part of Christmas–or rather, the emotions it captures are deeply wound up with the season.
I don’t know if it’s Christmas or the fact that the year is ending, but the season always seems to include moments of looking back and wondering about the roads we didn’t take, the dreams that we deferred and ultimately lost. Maybe it’s the old lover who got away, the one about whom you often find yourself wondering even though your life since then has gone pretty well, even if the “touring is hell”. Or maybe it’s something else entirely: realizing as you accumulate years past 50 that you’re not the writer you once hoped you’d be, or thinking about how you once thought there would be more than one kid with you at Christmas. Maybe it’s wishing for one more Christmas with one of both of your parents. That is what this song is about: the maybes that pile up through our lives, and the fact that once in a while life conspires to give us the smallest glimpse of what the maybe might have been, had we said this or done that at a particular moment, way back when.
But that’s all we ever get, isn’t it: just a glimpse, and it’s not even that, really. And somehow, when we turn to go back home, the snow has always turned to rain.
