But it's Christmas day

If I'm known for anything, it's repeating myself and saying things over again. If there's anything else I'm known for, it's corny old jokes.

So while this page is a quiet place today, as my almost-entirely-Christian readership stuffs themselves with food and makes off with Christmas bounty or watches that purportedly "classic" Christmas matchup of the Lakers vs. the Heat (???), I'll do my standard Christmas gush over the two greatest Christmas songs ever made, ones that it's hard to imagine any other songs ever surpassing.

Darlene Love, "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" (listen)
There is absolutely no other song that belts out Christmas spirit like this one. It's like Christmas' cheerleader. Like this time of year, there's a little bit of sad in it, and it's the clearest message: longing and heartbreak. But the cheer and scenery of this song could overpower the saddest story in the world. "The church bells in town", "the snow's coming down", "pretty lights on the tree", and the backup singer's simple "Christmas!" conjure up the most idealistic Christmastime scene, and the begging, soulful climax may be a desperate plea to get back the one she loves, but between Love's soul and Spector's sound, it sounds like, at the heart of it, it really doesn't matter. This song sounds amazing any time of the year, but it's in December when it moves me to tears.

The Pogues, "Fairytale of New York" (listen)
Sometimes it's hard to separate the actual heartbreak of this song with the sad drug-and-drink-fueled wreck of Shane MacGowan's life and the unspeakably tragic death of Kirsty MacColl, but there's also no question that there's heartbreak beyond the singers there. The story of a verbally abusive relationship between an alcoholic gambler and a heroin junkie, it's heartbreak is in that it's impossible to know how you feel about these people. You don't know whether you want them to stay together or break up. You don't know which of them is right. It's the divide between the necessity of hope and stark realism as Shane sings, "I could've been someone" and Kirsty responds back rightly but harshly, "Well so could anyone" before you find out why she's so bitter: "You took my dreams from me when I first found you." And it's hard to know if he can follow through on the promise, and you get the impression that she's heard this before and been disappointed by it, but he still tells her, "I kept them with me, babe. I put them with my own. Can't make it all alone, I built my dreams around you." Every time: waterworks.

But ultimately, it's the same as the Darlene Love song: it doesn't matter how heartbreaking it gets, the Christmas spirit overpowers all of it: "The boys of the NYPD choir were singing 'Galway Bay' and the bells are ringing out for Christmas Day." It's almost too beautiful.

Sorry to get all sappy, redundant and overly analytical on you. Just go listen to the songs. Merry Christmas, you crazy readers.