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about
It’s a song about going home for Christmas after you’ve moved away, and how things feel different, although still fadedly beautiful.
Heather grew up in Omaha and it has inspired multiple songs now, including “Another Christmas at Home” by Eux Autres (which is the funnier version of things) and now it has helped me write the lyrics for this one. Omaha gets very colorless and bleak this time of year, so people really pull out all the stops with decorations—especially the plastic blow-mold snowmen, Santas and nativity scenes. It creates a very eerie glow all over the city: dirty snow, opaque white sky, bitter cold, and these incandescent cheesy statues on every block, saying, "hey now, let’s be merry, ok?"
Brian also grew up in a sort of bleak town (Tacoma) and as we worked on this song, we talked a lot about our experiences of coming home. How, when we’d come home from the bars in our twenties, we found ourselves drawn to the glow of the Christmas tree. We'd sit there, a little drunk, feeling like we were still children longing for that Christmas “magic,” and yet also like adults who saw the painful limitations of our hometowns. Those towns make us who we are, and so even our Christmases in our home today still carry powerful echoes of those years gone by.
Structurally, the song is built around the narrator’s longing for the old feelings of magic and regretting how easily she cast off her origins for the bigger “shiny things”. And then, Brian’s voice comes in for the bridge, the booming ghost of Christmas Past with all of its insistent cheer, and the narrator wants to feel it but can’t quite give herself over completely.
Brian wrote most of the music and played almost all the instruments. The wonderful drummer Eric Eagle did the drums and our favorite exiled Englishman, Mr. Martin Feveyear, mixed it.
lyrics
Strings of lights
Frosted nights at the fireside
Bundled up with a cup of time
I never knew the magic was you
While I chased all the shiny things
(diamond rings) in the skyline
When we were young, reckless and dumb,
the gifts were all free
Now I’m tired and I’m leaving it under the tree tonight
Yesterday went the way of the firelight
Now I’m here and the candle is low
Dreaming away that Christmas Day could just fill me with something new
Without you this place is so cold
Twinkling lights / magical nights / Merry Christmas
Paper and bows / frost on your toes / Merry Christmas
Songs in the air / friends everywhere / Merry Christmas
The holiday is here…
credits
released December 3, 2021
Brian Naubert
vocals, guitars, bass, keys, percussion
Heather Larimer
vocals, keys, percussion
Eric Eagle
drums
