Like many, I often gravitate to the darker and melancholy side of things. So it goes with Christmas carols and songs, my favorite is “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”. A couple Christmases ago I noticed that there were two somewhat different sets of lyrics to the song. While neither are “jolly” one set is clearly sadder than the other. In doing some quick research, I discovered that Hugh Martin and Ralph Blaine wrote the song in 1944 for Judy Garland to sing in the movie “Meet me in St. Louis” (the song clearly outlived the movie). This original version of the lyrics are the sadder of the two. In 1957, Frank Sinatra wanted to record it for his album A Jolly Christmas and requested that the songwriters lighten up the lyrics. In their rewrite, Martin and Blaine focused on present happiness rather than the original’s anticipation of a brighter future. I share all of this because I’m thinking about Colleen a lot this first Christmas without her—she just loved everything about the season. From the original lyrics: “Someday soon we all will be together, if the fates allow.” I guess the fates aren’t allowing us to be together with Colleen anytime soon.
On a brighter side, I recently discovered a wonderful quote generally attributed to Dr. Seuss, “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” That gives me a lot of solace.
After Christmas, I’m going to focus on final preparations and provisioning of Hazel James for my voyage. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!
Will look forward to your blog Dan.
Be safe sailor.
I live by “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile that it happened,” but never had such a beautiful way to put it. Thank you for that, my friend. I’ll start cross-stitching it now. Lol