I don’t want this post to come off like I don’t like Christmas time, because I do like Christmas time. I love being around my family and I love the cold weather and I love the traveling and I love all the giving (and receiving!) and the general togetherness. But there are moments when all of that stuff is really hard, too. Expectations are high and memories are strong, and there’s no time like Christmas to highlight everything in your life that is changing outside of your control.

I have a tough time every year because I live three thousand miles away from my family now, and so when we get back together, I have to somehow fit myself into my old life and it doesn’t feel like it works properly anymore. I anticipate going home and look forward to it so much, and then I get here, and I’m reminded of all the reasons I love my family, but I’m also reminded of all the ways that I feel isolated from them.

There’s just a sort of loneliness that rears its head at this time of year, and it’s tougher to bear when you’re supposed to be feeling warm and fuzzy, and when no one has any patience for melancholy. It sounds super emo, but there’s this Counting Crows song that goes “what brings me down now is love, because I can never get enough.” I think that’s the way I feel coming home for the holidays — like it’s always just shy of enough.

Anyway, the point of all this is that sometimes you need to do a little Christmas brooding, and that’s okay. I like Christmas music (*NSYNC!!!! best ever!!!!!) a lot, but sometimes I just need something a little less holly-jolly. These are some Christmas songs that aren’t really Christmas songs. They’re not all sad, particularly, but they’re not about the gooey saccharine colored lights and candy canes of it all, either.

I uploaded the songs so you can download them. But if you like them, you should show the artists some iTunes love with some of their other songs. The Damnwells are on here twice because I’m straight-up obsessed with them. I am not sorry.

leona naess – christmas
words are falling from your lips
like christmas to my hips
so dangerous, the strangest feeling of being.

joni mitchell – river
i’m so hard to handle i’m selfish and i’m sad
i’ve gone and lost the best baby i ever had
oh, i wish i had a river i could skate away on

the damnwells – closer than we are
trying to catch christmas eve on a 737
via st. louis on a threadbare heart
trying hard to believe in ghosts and heaven
and wheels that turn with a broken part

the damnwells – xmas eve
we are empty-ended like we were before
and i miss you like a thunder with no storm
a ‘happy new year’s baby’ is all i can afford to give to you
i won’t bother you unless you want me to

brandi carlile – the heartache can wait
i’m thinking about years gone by
i’m thinking about church at midnight
i’m thinking about letting go
i think that might finally be alright

counting crows – a long december
the smell of hospitals in winter
and the feeling that it’s all a lot of oysters but no pearls
and all at once you look across a crowded room
to see the way that light attaches to a girl

mumford & sons – winter winds
as the winter winds litter london with lonely hearts
oh, the warmth in your eyes swept me into your arms

meiko – (maybe next year) x-mas song
maybe next year i’ll be good
maybe next year i’ll be better

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