My post title includes lyrics from the iconic song, Christmas Dream, sung by Perry Como. Every year when I played it during the holidays, the kids would cringe yelling, “Mom, this song sounds so olddddddd…!”
Well, it is old! Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice wrote Christmas Dream for a film titled, The Odessa File in the early 1970’s and Perry Como made it famous during one of his televised Christmas specials. The London Boy Singers are also on the track, with German lyrics included during the song.
I must have heard Christmas Dream at some point when I was very young, and it still brings joy each December. Perry Como’s voice sings through my Spotify and I’m transplanted to the pureness of the older Christmas movies when the set snow was real and the characters dressed up for the holidays.
If Webber and Rice penned the words, “nights should all be silent, days should all slow down” back in the 1970’s, imagine what they would think of life now. What would they say of the rat race known as “the holidays” in 2024? The non-stop online shopping today (this being Cyber Monday), by employees at their desks all across the corporate landscape? Since Black Friday started in July and Cyber Monday before Thanksgiving, when does “holiday” consumerism actually begin and end?
Additional lyrics include: Crazy things, said an’ done, Every single day but one! An end to the hurry, the noise and the worry! An end to the crying, the shouting, the dying… I suppose some things never change.
Staring at my December calendar, the lists, and often much-too-elevated holiday expectations, I choose to continue the intentional slowness of November. As the timeless lyrics ring, “hoping things will change”— the hoping becomes reality only when I make it so. Everything still gets accomplished, it’s all in how we approach the holidays. Remaining peaceful and happy, thankful that I get to, that I’m able to prepare for Jesus’ birthday and have loved ones with who I share all this excitement.
Thank you for reading and I wish you a joy-filled month throughout December!
Tales from a Mid-Lifer 
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