Someone mentioned Fairytale of New York as depressing in another thread. I don’t find it so but what christmas songs do you find depressing?
It’ll be Lonely This Christmas Without You To Hold (or whatever that song is actually called) is another kinda sad one.
I’m assuming you don’t mean just because I want to slit my wrists everytime I hear the crappy song, right?
Then let’s go with “The Little Boy Who Santa Claus Forgot”
“I’ll Be Home for Christmas” – It’s a beautiful song and sometimes beauty makes me weepy. Plus there’s a longing in it that just gets me.
“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” – I can’t listen to this song without crying. I associate it with my late mom so much. She used to weep at this song too, because she associated it with the scene in The Victors, where on a beautiful snowy night, as this gorgeous song is playing, a soldier is executed.
“What Child Is This?” “Lully, Lullay” “The Infant King” “In the Bleak MidWinter” – basically any carol that highlights the poignant, bittersweet contrast between the joy of Jesus’s birth and the tragedy of His death.
(By the way, I don’t even believe in Christ-as-savior or celebrate Christmas. I’m Jewish! But the story, true or not, gets to me anyway.)
“I’ll Be Home for Christmas” reveals in one verse that the singer actually won’t:
Edit: Dammit, didn’t preview before posting.
The song was originally much sadder. I’m not too keen on the negative reference to New York, though.
Nor do I. To me, the message of AFoNY is that ‘love will out’.
Link? Because I’m with you on that one!
First Christmas by Stan Rogers is a truly depressing song.
Jimmy Buffett’s Christmas Island. Depressing because I’m not on a beach, I’m spending *another * winter up here in the icebox.
Oh my f-ing God, this has to be the worst and most depressing Christmas song since Dear Mr Jesus. I mean, seriously?! It has the most pathetic components you can conjure up - little boy, poverty, dying mother, empty gesture, ‘Christmas’ spirit (buying things for others even if you don’t feel like it).
Grandmother cried at two Bing Crosby songs; that and something about poor little sheep who had lost their way. My Father survived WWII, but my Uncle did not.
“Happy Christmas (War is Over)” is pretty melancholy. lyrics/tab
Christmas at Ground Zero?
“If We Make It Through December” by Merle Haggard is easily the most depressing Christmas song ever. It 's about a man who got fired right before Christmas and how he’s just trying to get his family though the “coldest time of winter”. I’ve also thought “I Believe In Father Christmas” by Greg Lake is also depressing, due to how it focuses on the loss of childhood innocence.
From the Magoo Christmas Carol, All Alone In The World.
And, then, there’s Do They Know It’s Christmas, among several, the original 1984 version and a more recent one.
Paul Kelly’s How To Make Gravy
lyrics
listen to him poor his heart out to his brother from jail:
*Hello Dan, it’s Joe here, I hope you’re keeping well
It’s the 21st of December, and now they’re ringing the last bells
If I get good behaviour, I’ll be out of here by July
Won’t you kiss my kids on Christmas Day, please don’t let 'em cry for me
I guess the brothers are driving down from Queensland and Stella’s flying in from the coast
They say it’s gonna be a hundred degrees, even more maybe, but that won’t stop the roast
Who’s gonna make the gravy now? I bet it won’t taste the same
Just add flour, salt, a little red wine and don’t forget a dollop of tomato sauce for sweetness and that extra tang
And give my love to Angus and to Frank and Dolly,
Tell 'em all I’m sorry I screwed up this time
And look after Rita, I’ll be thinking of her early Christmas morning
When I’m standing in line
*
and it gets more heart rending as it goes along.
I didn’t notice this until yesterday. 