And so, this is Christmas…
Christmas, just like life itself — will become all that you choose or want it, to be.
Eleesha
As we are nearing Christmas, I think I can allow myself a Reflection of a song from that time of year.
It’s a song that does not bring back happy memories. In fact, if I heard it as a young child, I would burst into tears.
I inherited from my father a propensity to sing snatches of songs. Especially when in a comfortable mood. Hearing him sing a snatch of this song first caused my tears when I was around five years old.
It was not his intent to upset me. I suspect he, like me, was not always conscious of the lines we sing. A tune will just come to us, or some event may trigger a few songlines.
In this case, the song was, ‘The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot’.
I know not why it upset me so much. Of course, there wasn’t much money around in my young days, but I did not have a deprived childhood. On the contrary, Christmas was a celebratory event with presents aplenty to my young eyes. Yet this song twanged my young heartstrings.
it might be that it invoked in me some psychological fear of the uncertainty of the future (I’ve always been a bit of a worrier — I worry when I’m not worried!). Who knows what might be going on in the depths of the subconscious of a five-year-old? That age when the imaginary can seem just as real as anything we can touch or see. It could be I was overly empathetic to the boy in the song.
As an aside, I was also scared of feathers at that early age. Not birds. Feathers. I was happy amongst the chickens my parents kept. Yet, if my mother wished to deter me from investigating the contents of a drawer or cupboard, she placed a feather within. One glimpse and I would beat a wary retreat.
I have no idea what brought on that fear of feathers. At that stage in my life, I had not yet felt the bite of the Emperor Penguin in Edinburgh Zoo. That was to come some years later when my father tried to snap me standing beside the said bird (the penguin and I were the same height). I also have no idea how or why I overcame my feathery fear.
Anyway, back to the song, and you will be pleased to know I can now listen to it without collapsing into a paroxysm of tears.
