If any song could provide the theme for Christmas 2020, it would be I’ll Be Home for Christmas. Just like I was home for Thanksgiving and Canada Day and Mother’s Day and Easter. I anticipate being home for New Years and Valentines, too. While the song calls out a longing for home, most of us are itching to go somewhere. Anywhere other than home.
The theme could take so many forms this year. Maybe you’re like me, wishing you could be surrounded by adult kids and grandkids, but they’re stuck at home and so are you.
Maybe you’re the parent trapped at home with stir-crazy kids, or you’re the kid wishing to see friends, cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles.
Maybe you’re a senior isolated in a little apartment. Or worse, a hospital—longing to be home in your little apartment.
Maybe you expect to reach your eternal home, if not by this Christmas, maybe next.
Walter Kent and Kim Gannon wrote I’ll be Home for Christmas in 1943, from the perspective of a soldier serving overseas during World War II. The pair could not find a publisher willing to buy the song because they all felt it was too sad. The soldier is writing to his family to say he’ll be coming home for the holiday and requests snow, mistletoe, and presents. Then, wham! It ends with “I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams.”
Talk about melancholy.
But when Gannon sang it for Bing Crosby while the two played golf together, Crosby agreed to record it. You know the rest. The song quickly became the most requested in Crosby’s USO tours and a wartime favorite, despite the BBC banning it from their airwaves for fear it would bring down morale.
What is it about this 39-word song that so appealed to the soldiers? Its haunting melody certainly gives it a pathos they understood all too well. I’m thinking it gave them permission to feel all their emotions. The words validated their longings and let them know they weren’t alone in feeling that way.
The song’s continued popularity—having been recorded by nearly every artist who ever made a Christmas album—tells us the appeal goes far beyond soldiers. The nostalgic lyrics touch a tender place inside all of us, whether we’re far from home, stuck at home, or happy to be home.
Deep inside, doesn’t every one of us long for a real home? The word itself is charged with emotion, both positive and negative. It’s as though we all know what a true home is supposed to be. A place where you are loved and safe. Permitted to be yourself. Secure, valued. Care-free, at rest. The one place you truly belong. Even those who never experienced home that way long for it.
How? How do we all know what we’re made for? How can you feel homesick for a place you’ve never been? Could it be that your Creator built that longing into you?
I think St. Augustine nailed it with this: “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”
Billy Graham said, “My home is in Heaven. I’m just traveling through this world.”
And one of the last things Jesus told his disciples before he left them was, “Let not your heart be troubled. You are trusting God, now trust in me. There are many homes up there where my Father lives, and I am going to prepare them for your coming. When everything is ready, then I will come and get you, so that you can always be with me where I am.” (John 14:1-3)
When you hear I’ll Be Home for Christmas this year, go ahead. Let the feelings flood your heart. And in that, may the Christ of Christmas give you a glimpse into your forever home with him.
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