It’s been a stretch since my last entry. Purely unintentional, I’ve actually been working on something in the Drafts section and it’s gotten to be rather long. It started out as a dissection of where the TV show Heroes went wrong (and trust me, they did) and wound up evolving into a long essay on the nature of the heroic journey and what it truly means to be a “hero” and why so many writers just miss this fundamental dynamic. I work Superman in, too. 😉 In any event, the essay is far from finished, so rather than let the blog languish, I thought I’d throw something up.

So, tomorrow is Thanksgiving, which means in two days the Christmas season officially starts– one of my favorite times of the year. Since it’s “Almost Christmastime”, I thought it’d be fun to sound off on some “Almost Christmas Songs”. These are the songs that have nothing to do with Christmas, yet always leave me thinking about Christmas and/or Christmastime somewhere in my brain.

In no particular order:

1. MYUNG Theme – Yoko Kanno (Macross Plus OST) — This might be more easily recognized as “the instrumental version of Voices”, but it’s got a far more upbeat quality to it. It retains the melancholy of the vocal version, but feels more like a bedtime story. I guess it’s for that reason that I’m always reminded of Babes in Toyland, especially when it reaches what-I-call-the “sing-songy” portion about two and a half minutes into it. For that reason, I always wind up thinking about Christmastime when I hear it. The fact that Macross Plus was one of the last VHS anime purchases I ever made (in a late November, as I recall) might play a role, too. And I think I picked up the soundtrack itself in December. 😉
2. Same Old Lang Syne – Dan Fogelberg — Okay, this is fudging it a little, because this song is constantly played on radio stations as a Christmas song. However, its presence here on this list is because I am at war with said radio stations, because it is not a Christmas song, I tell you! 😉 Honestly, Google the lyrics. The only Christmas reference whatsoever is a single line placing the events on “Christmas Eve”. The rest of the song is a ballad about nostalgia, introspection, regret, and the future. It’s actually a decent song. But it is not Christmas. Nevertheless, because “the man” continues to try and foist it on us only at Christmastime, I always think of Christmas when I hear it– but only as it relates to my war, I tell you!
3. Gollum’s Song – Emiliana Torrini (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers) — This one I think will probably take most of you by surprise. The haunting Gollum’s Song and Christmas?! For some odd reason, yeah. The three Lord of the Rings movies were Christmas releases– annual events. The general pattern they’d fall into was to release the soundtrack at the start of the December, the movie itself 2-3 weeks later, and then it would be time to catch multiple screenings. 😉 During that time, though, the soundtrack would be permanently housed in my CD player and I’d blare the score at all hours. In 2002 (TTT), it was always capped off with Emiliana’s haunting voice and the portrait of dear old Gollum. Through the simple fact that I went through the Christmas season listening to this score over and over, anytime I hear Gollum’s Song now, I’m back in that Christmas season, listening to the CD and waiting for the movie.

I’d list more, but some are simply derivative of the above (Into the West by Annie Lennox, for example– same reasons as Gollum’s, although less pronounced) and others are simply because I played a video game a lot around Christmas (FF7, I’m looking at you). In the end, I think that’d get tiresome.

Those are my top 3, though. Songs that make me think of Christmas, yet which have nothing to do with Christmas. Feel free to share your own.

I might follow this up once the season is in full swing with a top ten Christmas songs list or something. Howdy, Bing! 😉