“This Christmas Day” by TSO

“Just because it’s a Christmas song doesn’t mean it’s good.” I say this to myhusband when he insists on scanning radio stations for Christmas music. I draw the line at Anne Murray’s “The Little Drummer Boy” and punch the CD button.

The Trans-Siberian Orchestra performs solid Christmas songs that are a welcome take on the traditional mix. A personal favorite is “This Christmas Day.” The singer is a man whose daughter (I had previously thought it to be his wife or lover) is returning to him and to the relatiionship on Christmas day.  He wonders whether his prayers for her return have been answered or if the prayer was just “wishes in disguise.” He concludes that indeed his prayers were answered.

Midway the tune shifts, and powerful guitar riffs accompany the affirmative lyics.  Confidence replaces wondering. His Christmas and his life are restored, and his enthusiasm builds as he admires “the ornament” “the perfect tree” the “string of lights.” So “Everything is now as it should be.”

Finally he shows his appreciation speaking in metphors, I believe, to God calling him “the first [dream] I knew” and “the star” who has been faithful all along. The song is significant because it incorporates the restoration of relationships with the surface articles of Christmas. In other words, it offers one contemporary application of the true meaning behind the season.

The lyrics look simplistic without the fine instrumentation and vocals of TSO, but do try to listen to the full song during the holidays. It’s on the Christmas Eve and Other Stories album.

For of all the dreams
You were the first I knew
And every other one
Was a charade of you
You stayed close when I was far away

In the darkest night
You always were the star
You always took us in
No matter who we are
And so she’s coming home this
Christmas Day

Queen’s “Hammer to Fall”

Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” has become one of those songs that will be appreciated for decades. Its theme is existentialism: “Nothing really matters . . . to me.” We can sing it from memory echoing its hopelessness and despair.

Equally existential is their less-well-known “Hammer to Fall.” I used it to teach metaphor. Look up the lyrics sometime. The theme is the relentless pursuit of death. That’s the hammer.

“Every night and every day, a little piece of you is falling away . .. .build your muscles as your body decays” and so on. It addresses ways that Westerners fight and deny the approach of the “hammer.” “You lock your doors, but rain is pouring through your window pane.” Irresistable death.  Inevitable.

But unlike Dylan Thomas (”Rage, rage against the dying of the night”) Queen’s song offers us nothing. It ends “We’re just wainting for the hammer to fall.” Brings to mind Becket’s Waiting for Godot — just waiting. Hopeless. And, of course, God isn’t coming in either work.