Christmas is the season for merriment, but merriment requires spending time with people in common surrounding with a mutual host. Therefore, one can reason that Christmas was designed to bring people together and not intended for the soloist. It can be a very grim and lonesome day if you share the Christian belief and are alone or you don’t share the beliefs or practices and you feel left out. Well, my day was spent in solitude for neither of the aforementioned reasons.
At six in the morning Terry my friend in L.A. rang me. I was in a deep and sound sleep. He phoned early because he had been lonely and irritated because a past girlfriend Dahora stood him up. She had promised to come by the night before since her new boyfriend had gone out of town. Unfortunate for him, because he could not get over her since they parted over eleven months ago and he is still addicted to her in the fleshy-way. So I held the phone half-awake to listen to Terry’s whine about how he is tired of being alone, the song that rhythm and blues artist Al Green made popular in 1971. I am thinking to myself, ‘Well, I am also alone but I am not gonna have a baby about it, get over yourself’ I thought. I woke up alone and spent the day alone with the exception of attending a church service this morning which meant being surrounded by a few hundred people.
After church, I went to visit Aunt Leola who is ninety-three or four, the last surviving sibling of seventeen and lives alone. She has tons of great-great nieces and nephews and is always happy to have some company, so I stopped to visit someone who lives alone on Christmas Day. As I pulled up, Danna the neighbor and Jasper her five-year old son was bringing Aunt Leola a gift bag. Leola was doing fine and told us that her two nieces called and a nephew who offered to pick her up and bring her to their home for dinner. Almost always, Leola says, “I don’t want to go nowhere; I just want to stay at home.” So she is just fine all alone. I was feeling anxious myself to get to my own home, bake my chicken and cook okra, pour myself a cup of nog, throw on a fire log, turn on the jazz cable station and write in merriment by myself.
Christmas season is a time that is meant for merriment but it brings out the worst in families, people become depressed while others just medicate. When you think about it, a lot of Christmas songs are sad. Take the lyrics from Bing Crosby’s “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas….just like the one I used to know” which can almost provoke tears. There are a ton of other songs: Elvis’ Blue Christmas, Charles Brown Please Come Home for Christmas, Christmas Just Aint Christmas Without The One You Love by the OJays, Brooks & Dunn's It Won't Be Christmas Without You, and The Emotions What Do the Lonely Do at Christmas. Even Prince made a sad Christmas song titled Loney Christmas. Although they are sad songs, we still love to listen to them. Whether you are alone or not, pour yourself a glass of eggnog, pop in a Christmas CD, and make your own merriment with the blue songs of Christmas.
