Great song, all sentimental and sobby, but there’s something a bit askew: The penultimate line, “Christmas Eve will find me where the love light gleams”. What up wi’ dat? “Love light”? Is this the theme song of E.T.: The Sequel? I doubt it.
Is the singer telling us he’d rather spend the night at the House of the Rising Sun, getting his ashes hauled by some woman he can pay not to talk, instead of going to the in-laws and putting up with a drunk uncle, a bickering cousin and her husband, and the usual cheap crap presents? Not that I blame him, really, but does he have to drag us into that Hallmark Card / Thomas Kinkade nostalgia for a Christmas reunion that no real-world person has ever personally experienced? Am I missing something besides the holiday spirit?
Sigh. Ignore the second post. I’m an idiot who should not have two windows open at the same time. Sorry about that.
What I was going to say… E.T. and Neil Diamond are all about the heart light, not the love light. Which I’ve always thought called for Rolaids. Maybe that works for love light, too.
You’re missing the context for that song. “I’ll be Home for Christmas” was written in 1943. It was about people who knew that they wouldn’t be home for that Christmas, and risked never coming home for any Christmas ever again. It also conveyed the melancholy of those on the home front missing the absent loved ones.
Maybe the lyrics will make more sense in that context.
It is a poetic alliteration used to remind us of the warm, safe, cozy feeling we share when we close to the ones we love.
Or maybe it *is * about sailors visiting whores on Christmas Day. Friction and all that.