Judy Garland - “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”

I’ve never seen Meet Me in St. Louis all the way through — while I secretly love “The Trolley Song,” the goddamned title track gives me hives. Still, I’ve always liked “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” in the most melancholy, Charlie Brown sort of way.

So, it’s always seemed so weird to me that people regard this song as some kind of cheery little ditty about compulsively barking, “Merry Christmas!”

In the film — which is also where Judy Garland introduces and (IMHO) eternally owns the song — “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” reflects trepidation about change and the longing for an unattainable familiarity that a lot of people (including me) closely associate with the Christmas season.

It turns out my childhood instinct was not only spot-on, but that the lyric actually started out being even more depressing. Via WikiP:

When presented with the original draft, Garland, her co-star Tom Drake and director Vincente Minnelli criticized the song as depressing, with lines such as “Have yourself a merry little Christmas / It may be your last / Next year we may all be living in the past” and “Faithful friends who were dear to us / Will be near to us no more”. Though he initially resisted, songwriter Hugh Martin made several changes to make the song more upbeat. For example, the lines “It may be your last / Next year we may all be living in the past” became “Let your heart be light / Next year all our troubles will be out of sight”. Garland’s version of the song, which was also released as a single by Decca Records, became popular among United States troops serving in World War II; her performance at the Hollywood Canteen brought many soldiers to tears.

Well, there you go. “Merry Christmas,” indeed.

There’s a shameful relief in admitting you feel a little sad around Christmas. You think about the people who aren’t around anymore, and the memories that get a little dimmer each year, and you watch as everything around you changes without regard to how it fits into your bulleted Holiday Plan. Man. It can be rough.

But, that’s the funny part. In that Elliott Smith sad-in-a-good-way fashion, this song kinda makes me feel better. It vibrates on roughly the same emotional wavelength as my own feelings about the holidays, which means it ends up making me feel extra-super-sad for a while, and then, more often than not, I end up feeling a little better than when I started.

I don’t have a grudge against people who think the holidays are a shiny happy time when everything’s always perfect and people who feel otherwise must strain to glow with the fake internal warmth of a Thomas Kinkade house. Really. I don’t. (Mostly.) But, I definitely feel more at home with the folks who acknowledge that Christmas is complicated, emotionally edgy, and utterly unbearable if you insist on pretending it’s otherwise.

So, to the extent that you’re able, I do hope you have yourself a merry little Christmas. But, y’know what? Do it on your own terms. And flip a merry little bird to anyone who presses you to fake your jolly better.