“Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" by Sleeping At Last, Wednesday, December 8, 2021

Sleeping at Last is a band that almost made a song of the day two days ago for their cover of "Chasing Cars" until I made time to listen to the Snow Patrol version and their music, eventually settling on "You're All I Have." Like Snow Patrol, Sleeping at Last came to fame, albeit not Snow Patrol-level of fame, from a well-placed appearance in Season 3 of Grey's Anatomy. The indie-rock band turned solo project of singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Ryan O'Neal has had many songs included in the ABC drama and its spin-off, Private Practice. Their cover of "Chasing Cars" was used to add a dramatic counterpoint in the series, as the audience had already heard the original in the Season 2 finale. O'Neal stays busy producing lots of music, composing albums based on larger concepts, such as the solar system, the Enneagram, emotions, land, oceans, and many other topics. 

WAR IS OVER, IF YOU WANT IT. In the band's large scope of theme music, they have recorded several Christmas albums. Today's song is Sleeping At Last's cover of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's 1971 holiday hit, which was written in protest of America's involvement in the Vietnam War. My favorite version of the song is done by Acceptance, but it's not available on Apple Music. My inclusion of this song comes with a prejudice that I'm reexamining. When I was young and influenced by far-right Christian rhetoric, I believed that this song was dangerous, as was his hit "Imagine," also released in '71. I was taught that war is a last resort, but often necessary, and Lennon's Marx-lifted lyrics in "Imagine" were driving people away from the very foundations of freedom: God, guns, and gold. "Happy Xmas" was a song that removed "Christ" from the title, and that was what the "War on Christmas" looked like in the '90s and probably earlier. The song wishes Lennon's son and Ono's daughter a merry Christmas at the beginning of the track, and the song never says "X," but always "Christmas." The lyrics of "War is over, if you want it" strike me as hopeful, idealistic, and naive depending on my mood. Not knowing much about the Christian influence or backgrounds of The Beatles (which would be a fascinating study), I'm assuming that Lennon would have been well-acquainted with popular notions of faith and virtues typically attributed to Christianity. Lennon and the Beatles strayed from state religion of their homeland, venturing into the realm of Hinduism, Hare Krishna, and other eastern religions; however, to me, today, "Happy Xmas" seems to be pleading with the Christian country of the United States, even using some Christianese, using Christmas as a platform of peace and ending the war. If you're in America and an evangelical, though, Lennon just sounds like a babbling heretic. After years of blatant racism and looking back at wars with no end game, it may be time to listen a little closer to the babbling.

LET'S HOPE IT'S A GOOD ONE. "Happy Xmas" is proceeding a holiday season full of uncertainty. As a world, we don't know if our vaccines will hold against Omicron and world travel is again questionable. The return of quarantine measures for people coming back to South Korea makes me wonder if we'll ever have a normal Christmas season in the future. Personally, I'm dealing with a lot of uncertainty at work, and an existential crisis about when it's time to move on with my life. Grad school? What to study? Reduce my focus on work and let some things slide? And lots of decisions that are out of my hands that could make next year particularly difficult. Then there's my blog. I'm determining what I want to do with it next year. Do I really want to spend two hours each day researching and writing? Was this just a quarantine project? Do I want to be a writer? What niche can I fit my writing into? What should I do to improve as a writer? What should I do to build my skills? I'm hoping for a good 2022 in which I can push aside the negativity and focus on becoming a better version of myself. I hope for a year that I can connect with people I care about and learn what it is that I'm supposed to share with this world. 


Check out the original with annotations



John Lennon & Yoko Ono version:

Sleeping at Last version:


Acceptance version:






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