Christmas Eve

As I said to a friend recently, I cannot rationally talk about how much I love this song. If you played it for me 50 times in a row, first of all, I'd be able to listen to it 50 times in a row, and second, I'd be crying by the end of it 48 times.

The article I linked gives a little history. Shane McGowan based the lyrics loosely on a J.P. Donleavy novel. Knowing much about the Pogues, and their wild history, it amazes me every time I hear Fairytale that this band was capable of this much beauty. Then again, knowing what I know about the Pogues, and my own Irish heritage, the tragic beauty makes perfect sense to me. I get chills listening to it, every time. So, seriously, if it's not tears, it's chills.

One memory I have of this song involves an old friend Phil. He and his wife used to have a rocking Christmas party every year; they may still. It's been a long time since I've been invited. At any rate, invariably at this party, we'd be drunk to the point of incoherence (much in the tradition of dear old Shane), and someone would put on this song, and we'd sing it--lustily, loudly, comically. I loved those renditions.

My other memory is that of my own head when I listen to this song. Generally, the waterworks begin on this song when I'm alone, in my car, singing along to myself, and I start hearing the lyrics, and picturing this old Irish couple, gasping out their last breaths in hatred, dying alone and jaded, him in a jail cell, her on a methodone drip. We all have visions in our head of what songs "look like", and here's mine. What I see in my head, EVERY SINGLE TIME--the end, during that beautiful swirling string arrangement, they're young, and full of promise again, and they're dancing together under a streetlamp, in the falling snow. Turning each other around and around for all eternity in his final dream.

Merry Christmas to all. May you find yourself with the ones you love this holiday, or, at the very least, dancing together in their dreams.
Fairytale of New York - The Pogues


MP3 File