We’ll have to muddle through somehow

The best Christmas song tells us how to proceed this holiday season

My Christmas cards mailed today. I chose a template online and inserted my own photos, like most of us do these days, but I changed the suggested words sprinkled across the front, words like “joy” and “peace” and “hope” or whatever. I knew something different was needed, so I turned to music.

Most of my favorite holiday songs land somewhere on a scale of “just a tad melancholic” (White Christmas) to “tough by somewhat optimistic” (Hard Candy Christmas) to “why am I not drinking” (River). My favorite is right there in the middle: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. It felt appropriate to pull a line from that number – Let your heart be light – for this year’s card. I imagine, though, it was easier to sprinkle those around on a template than it will be to uphold that sentiment as 2020 winds down.

Some may find the original lyrics somewhat depressing, but they have nothing on the actual original lyrics by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, who wrote the number for the 1944 musical Meet Me in St. Louis:

Have yourself a merry little Christmas.
It may be your last.
Next year we may all be living in the past.
Have yourself a merry little Christmas.
Pop that champagne cork.
Next year we may all be living in New York.
No good times like the olden days.
Happy golden days of yore.
Faithful friends who were dear to us
Will be near to us no more.
But at least, we all will be together, if the Lord allows.
From now on, we’ll have to muddle through somehow.
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

*Amazing.*

Star Judy Garland, along with others, wasn’t a fan and asked for a rewrite. Martin resisted at first, but eventually delivered this:

Have yourself a merry little Christmas.
Let your heart be light.
Next year all our troubles will be
Out of sight.
Have yourself a merry little Christmas.
Make the yuletide gay.
Next year all our troubles will be
Miles away.
Once again as in olden days,
Happy golden days of yore.
Faithful friends who were near to us
Will be dear to us once more.
Someday soon, we all will be together, if the fates allow.
Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow.
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

Subsequent recordings change the second-to-last line to “Hang a shining star upon the highest bough,” which Martin delivered after Frank Sinatra asked for more “jolly” lyrics.

I’ve never liked that second change. It takes away from the point of the line before it – that we’ll all be together someday, hopefully. But until then, we have to get through life, and we have to figure it out.

This song has been in my head this past week, not only thanks to the holiday music I’ve had playing in the car and in the house, but because COVID is finally seeping into my circle.

The father of my brother’s friend passed suddenly. My friend’s grandfather looked like he was going to make it, and then didn’t. A classmate of my brother’s – and someone who has been so kind to me, and even wrote a note to my mom when she was sick – lost her father: “He got it from someone who knowingly went to work sick.” A friend’s father is still in ICU. A friend’s mother is a frontline nurse and now has it. And on and on.

The one who lost his grandfather said in a text: “My first draft of the obit had something along the lines of, ‘Despite his distinguished service in the military and as a nurse, his community did not deem his health worthy of taking appropriate disease-prevention measures.’ Eighty-eight is a good, long life, more than many get. I just wish it had ended differently.”

His wife is having their second child any now, so they won’t be at the small graveside service. It will just be his mother and her brothers, saying goodbye to a father who survived war but not this – this being a disease we can’t even all objectively agree is a disease, and a battle many of our leaders have refused to take a proper lead against.

It’s not surprising that Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas was a hit when it was released as a single in December 1944, especially with those serving during World War II. The song reportedly brought soldiers to tears, and who could blame them with what they had to face.

We aren’t storming the beaches of Normandy, but we are in a type of war. We’ve all lost so much this year. Hundreds of thousands dead and millions more infected, many of whom will continue to suffer in ways we’ve barely begun to understand. Even if you haven’t experienced death firsthand, you’ve felt loss. We’ve lost connection, and time with family and friends. Time around the water cooler or in the bleachers, in classrooms and conference rooms, at restaurants and plays and museums. Time in the sun, in the water, under the stars, on the road, on the trail, out, out, away from these walls. Away from masks and curbside deliveries only what it means to be in a community.

(Well, those of us who followed protocols lost most of these. I’m looking at you, people still eating at restaurants *and posting about it online.* Feel my judgment.)

My mother had a difficult final year, stuck in the house to protect her health. How I wish I had found a way to take her to more places, to see more things. She had to muddle through, mostly homebound with a terminal illness to avoid catching a virus that would surely have done her in. How I wish her funeral had not had to be outside on a dreary, rainy day, with not near enough people able to attend and say goodbye.

Many of us lost Thanksgiving with family members, and we’re losing Christmas with family, too. Death doesn’t discriminate, and it doesn’t stop now that our halls are decked and Trump somehow keeps managing to lose the election over and over and we’d just like a break, for Heaven’s sake.

Many of us won’t be together this year – the fates won’t allow it. Some of our faithful friends won’t be near to us. It’s terrible, and we can’t stop it. But here we are, muddling through.

Maybe that’s why so many of us are still determined to go through with traditions such as sending Christmas cards and decorating the house. It’s a choice to celebrate in times of unease and sorrow, to light a candle in darkness. My mother is gone, but I’m not going to keep her beloved decorations in a box because of it. Without her, and without friends and family, this holiday will be more than difficult.

My heart is heavy when I think of what – and who – I am missing. But it also is light with memories, and hope for better years. Light, if I let it be.