Go ahead and get down the Christmas decorations again. It is time.
This is difficult song for me. It looks back. I look forward. It paints a history that has brought us to this moment. I feel like I can remake myself every day.
I guess the subtle message here is that both are true. We have a past, but it doesn't HAVE to control our future. The Muse says that tomorrow is neither a logical extension of the past nor some whole new version of existence. That would leave us dangling and feeling very alone. It is a combination of the two that God uses as He needs to show us his love.
The pop group Coldplay and the Muse are close pals. Chris Martin and his collaborators write just enough actual lyrics without making it a too-obvious ballad. That formula gives the Muse ample freedom to speak to the listener uniquely.
Christmas, as this song reminds, is about taking sin, rejection, tragedy, fighting, and pain, and turning it into something positive. How?
In this little song, it is the trappings of the Christmas Holiday that overcome the grief. Carolers, snow, lights, chandeliers of hope, the street, and the sea all invade the pain. It all really makes no sense. That is why the Muse can use it, and the Muse doesn't have to work hard to expand this to ANY environment invading our little corner of depression with a slowly dawning joy. The world is a whole bunch of pain. And then, out of seemingly nowhere, we experience the universe in our own way and our outlook improves a little. That is the Muse in our lives. We are capable of only failure without this guidance.
Both pain and triumph are there to show us God's love for us personally. The Muse can even use artificial creations like our modern Christmas remembrance to bring us up the the top edge of the pit of dispare in which we might be and show us another place view life from.
I begin Christmas Holiday music as early as my family will let me. After years of reworking what is comfortable for everyone, November 1st is the compromise day on which I can play Christmas Holiday Music again each year. The first song I always select is In Like a Lion by Relient K.
The song begins and then shortly arrives at the core of the lyric:
"Always winter, never Christmas."
Apart from the C.S. Lewis reference to The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, the Muse knows that we need the obvious meaning. On November 1st, many parts of the world have been wintery for a while already, and Christmas day can still seem distant. Little did the listener know that after many song plays, the second layer of this song emerges.
The ending line
"You are here and we will not lose hope."
Just as we wait for Christmas with the help of our friends and family, we ALL wait for that better life.
What is it that allows us to hope? Certainly not ourselves. The Muse is very clear here: hope is a non-sensical externality. We know that God is with us (Emmanuel) in the form of the Holy Spirit, but mere facts are not enough to maintain hope for something more.
The song ends not with a statement about our grit and determination to keep hope alive. Such efforts are tiring and impossible. It is, instead, that God will not let us lose hope, since He is with us. Christmas does come each year, and some day we will have Christmas every day.
