![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12Today is 'gravy day': the day on which Paul Kelly's beautiful, poignant, bittersweet, brilliant Christmas song 'How To Make Gravy' takes place. This song — which has always been my favourite Christmas song — is beloved by Australians. I've always loved it, but it took on a special resonance after I emigrated, because the song is about what it feels like to be cut off from the baking summer heat, innappropriate northern hemisphere winter food, warmth, messiness, and chaotic loving family that is the secular Australian Christmas celebration.
This year, I imagine the song has a resonance for many more people — Australians familiar with 'gravy day' who never imagined they would experience its sentiments during their own Christmas celebrations, and those of you from other countries for whom this song is absent from the Christmas mythology. May the song's simplicity, compassion, and humanity bring you the hope it brings me, this year, and every year.
(I will also make the obvious point that those of us who celebrate Christmas in culturally majority-Christian countries are grieving the same thing that people of other religions have already had to endure. I know Jewish friends had to have their Passover seder over Zoom, and all other holidays since then as well, while Muslims in the UK were told at 9pm the night before Eid that there was going to be a national hard lockdown and all festivities had to be cancelled. Christians, and atheists like me who come from a culturally Christian background need to acknowledge that, and recognise that we are not being uniquely hard done by.)
This year, a bunch of Australian artists also made a cover version of the song, sung over Zoom, which really gets to the heart of what Paul Kelly's original intentions, translating it to the newer, sharper grief of the pandemic.
This year, I imagine the song has a resonance for many more people — Australians familiar with 'gravy day' who never imagined they would experience its sentiments during their own Christmas celebrations, and those of you from other countries for whom this song is absent from the Christmas mythology. May the song's simplicity, compassion, and humanity bring you the hope it brings me, this year, and every year.
(I will also make the obvious point that those of us who celebrate Christmas in culturally majority-Christian countries are grieving the same thing that people of other religions have already had to endure. I know Jewish friends had to have their Passover seder over Zoom, and all other holidays since then as well, while Muslims in the UK were told at 9pm the night before Eid that there was going to be a national hard lockdown and all festivities had to be cancelled. Christians, and atheists like me who come from a culturally Christian background need to acknowledge that, and recognise that we are not being uniquely hard done by.)
This year, a bunch of Australian artists also made a cover version of the song, sung over Zoom, which really gets to the heart of what Paul Kelly's original intentions, translating it to the newer, sharper grief of the pandemic.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-21 02:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-21 03:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-21 08:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-21 09:51 pm (UTC)