\n| Jimmy Trivette<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n These days, he\u2019s better known as Professor Gilyard. He teaches at UNLV and he and the Ogre became friends at the early morning daily Mass they both attended. The Ogre was left bereft of a car, since I took ours, so Clarence would drive him to UNLV after Mass so he didn\u2019t have to walk. Neat, huh? Anyway, it makes me love Die Hard<\/i> even more, which I thought was impossible.<\/p>\n I\u2019m so digressing. This post is supposed to be about my absolute favorite Christmas song of all time, ever.<\/p>\n Here it is.<\/p>\n I know what you\u2019re thinking. Or what you might be thinking. Christmas is about Christ, His birth, what He means to us, redemption, hope, and love. Not about Irish kids chasing the American dream. It\u2019s probably disgraceful for a Catholic blogger to admit that her favorite Christmas song includes the words \u201chappy Christmas your arse\u201d and doesn\u2019t mention Christ, God, Mary, angels, saints, wise men or even a freaking star.<\/p>\n Well, then I\u2019m disgraced. But as a good little English major, allow me to pontificate about the song for you, which I can do with the best, seeing as how I\u2019ve spent an inordinate amount of time pondering this song and why I love it so much.<\/p>\n The first half of the first verse is the intro. It sets the stage for the history of the couple whom the song is about. You are told so much in this first half-verse; that the man\u2019s a drunk, that he dreams of his girl, that he loves her, that he hopes for the future, that he wants their future to be better. The song gives a three-year history of this couple. Three Christmases.<\/p>\n The second verse talks about how they ended up in New York, how they were both young and smitten with each other, how they dreamed of New York the way children dream of impossibly perfect candy shops. That was the night they fell in love, the night they decided to go to New York. Their first Christmas.<\/p>\n The second Christmas, in the third verse, the two have obviously become lost in the hard living of New York. He\u2019s a drunk; she\u2019s a heroin addict. The whole verse is a fight between the two. You can hear their despair, their frustration, their hopelessness. When the girl says, \u201cI pray God it\u2019s our last,\u201d I don\u2019t think she means that she hopes they will no longer be together next Christmas. I think she means that she hopes they\u2019ll no longer be alive.<\/p>\n The last verse is my favorite. It\u2019s their third Christmas together, and they seem calmer. Not happy, but not hating each other either. They\u2019re talking, and what\u2019s really plaguing them comes to the surface. They both blame the other for their failed lives. The man is despairing because he\u2019s wasted his life. He could have been someone. The woman accuses him of taking her dreams from her.<\/p>\n The next few lines are the ones that make this my favorite song. It\u2019s so beautiful, what he says to her. \u201cI kept them with me babe \/ I put them with my own \/ can\u2019t make it all alone \/ I\u2019ve built my dreams around you.\u201d<\/p>\n And throughout the whole song, the bells are ringing out for Christmas Day, symbolizing what bells always symbolize. Joy and sorrow. Beginnings and endings. Hope.<\/p>\n Yeah, I know, I\u2019m probably reading way too much into a simple song. The Ogre certainly thinks so.<\/p>\n So why is this my favorite Christmas song?<\/p>\n It\u2019s my favorite because I understand the people in it. They make sense to me. I recognize them. They are people I used to know, used to be friends with. They are me. They are the Ogre. They are all of us, in some way, before we had something greater to live for. They are still me sometimes, when I let despair get the better of me. When I put my own selfish desires above what is good.<\/p>\n And yet, in spite of it all, they are good. They are essentially, deep down, good people. Just like all of us. Certainly they are deeply wounded and utterly flawed, but they love each other. They really, truly love each other. They\u2019re just so lost.<\/p>\n I can\u2019t identify with Our Lady, nor with St. Joseph, the angels, the shepherds, or the wise men. In so many ways they are abstract for me. In other ways, they just seem so removed from our world today. But I identify with the people in this song. People searching for a better way to live. A better time. And I think to myself, this is why Christmas is such a miracle. This is who Christ came to save. Them. Me. All of us. He came because he loves us, in spite of our drunkenness and drug addictions and mean-spirited pettiness.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why this is my favorite Christmas song. Because what we celebrate tomorrow is the answer to the song. What we celebrate tomorrow is the possibility of redemption. the birth of hope, and the staggering sacrifice of love.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We\u2019re watching Die Hard right now, a Christmas tradition, and I\u2019m supposed to be wrapping presents but I\u2019m worried I won\u2019t have time to write my post tomorrow so I\u2019m writing it now. Oh, and speaking of Die Hard, guess who the Ogre struck up a friendship with during his long months of solitude in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1110,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n Fairytale of New York<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We're watching Die Hard right now, a Christmas tradition, and I'm supposed to be wrapping presents but I'm worried I won't have time to write my post\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2011\/12\/fairytale-of-new-york.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta 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