Christmas and John Lennon

During the Christmas season we hear ad infinitum all and every Christmas song imaginable. That's okay, of course. They are part of the holidays and many are well worth hearing, containing sentiments expressed well and to a good point.

Not all of them quite make that standard, however; even some of the better ones. John Lennon's Happy Xmas (War is Over) is one of those. It is a neat little tune, at times ethereal and perhaps even angelic. But the trouble with it is that it preaches to the choir just a bit too much, while more or less undermining the very sentiments it pretends to address.

War is over...if you want it. Well, of course the bulk of the Western world wants it. Indeed, most individuals in the world want it. Yet the problem with calling for the end of war is that it falls on too many deaf ears. So long as that's the case, so long as there are those who do in fact want it on some level, then we have little more than something too idealistic to be practical.

Especially when you attempt to combine Lennon's general philosophy with the apparent point of the song. One need only recall the words of another famous song of his to get that irony: Imagine there's no heaven...no religion. In short, he usually in his life appealed to sentiments contrary to Christmas. Without Heaven or Religion there would be no Christmas. Indeed, with nothing universal and eternal, the sentiments he expresses in his work are rendered meaningless. There can be no brotherhood of man worth salt without forever.

And Forever is precisely what the greatest Christmas songs call us towards. Family, friends, fellowship; these are eternal values. John Lennon ultimately only speaks in support of earthly ones. Values of the type he could not safely proclaim even or especially in the Gulag, or modern China or North Korea. Places, it must be noted, without heaven or religion. Places mired in earthly concerns.

In the end, what he preaches must be hollow. Or, and we should truly and fully hope and pray for this, the song shows he was in fact a better man than his professed creed. Because as it is, what he calls for is little more than comfort and self indulgence. Those feelings are not in the Christmas spirit.