Great song. Not entirely sure what it’s alluding to.
At first it seems like a divorced couple. The guy just has to see his ex; Because it’s Christmas
Then it gets a bit morbid. Is he at the cemetery? Her grave?
Finally a reference to being on his knees. Is he at a church alter? Praying to The Virgin Mary? Praying to his dead wife?
Yeah, I’m dazed and confused. Home sick with a fever. Trying to cheer up with holiday music. Google gives me the meaning of Christmas. Not the meaning of the song.
Lyrics
Murder Ballads are an old tradition in Country Music and Bluegrass.
Banks of the Ohio is a classic.
Modern country rarely writes Murder Ballads anymore. One will slip in occasionally. Johnny Cash caught massive flack for recording Delia’s Gone in the mid 90’s. But, Cash always liked dark songs. Long Black Veil is one of his standards.
Delia’s Gone is actually pretty good. Just don’t play it repeatedly around your gf or wife.
I guess a Christmas song about a dead wife had to happen eventually.
While we’re doing ambiguous “Is she gone or is she dead” songs, how about John Hiatt’s Crossing Muddy Waters? The first lyric references her taking a flatboat cross the shallow. So…she just left. But later in the song, she’s
“In a rush of wind and river of song
I can hear my true love moaning
Crying for her baby child
Or crying for her husband”
Lots of death imagery in the song. So it’s one of those works where you think it’s one thing at the beginning, but at the end, you’re not so sure.