rottinghaus:

Mario Lanza - “O Holy Night”

i am not religious. i won’t get into my beliefs on the internet because who gives a shit. what i will tell you is that a good, bombastic version of “O Holy Night” is enough to dampen the ducts near my eyes, proving that my Robo-Heart Model #1212 is leaking and in need of repair. it’s the “Sturm Und Drang” necessary to get through a holiday where i find myself in a store trying to buy a Disney Princess sleeping bag, seething at a child surrounded by hundreds of other people seething at hundreds of other children. it fills me with wonder, laying out an epic blank canvas in front of me and i feel i can see into infinite space, take control of my own destiny and right the wrongs of the previous year. i find within its overwrought bluster a peace that i have no explanation for and a love for people and places and things that i have previously lost. it re-energizes me to the point of positivity.

anyhow — here’s the famous Irish singer Marry O’Lanza doing a particularly insane version. i love it so much i have it on vinyl.

Christmas night always held a weight of melancholy. A sort of sadness in having received what you wanted only to find the allure was in the anticipation all along. Or not having received what you wanted and enduring the particularly lonesome work of being an adult. Getting over it and feigning contentedness because at this point, the world doesn’t care all that much about what we wanted. And what we Want usually far pales in comparison to what we Need anyhow. But this year, as the kids retrieve their new favorite books and half broken toys and scramble into a warmed car that surges off into the dark night toward their own home, it feels not so much like anti-climax but calm. All is calm.

For once, it still seems as though the best is yet to come. And whatever distance still keeps us from those we love or what we need seems sure to be surmounted by the New Year ahead.

A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices!
O night divine, the night when Christ was born;

O night, O Holy Night , O night divine!