Originally published on Hokeyblog on 12/12/2013. Reposted here with full permission, authority, divine right, spiritual license, reincarnation privileges, and eminent domain, because I own the damn thing.
I wanted to bring this one back for Buttkickin’ Holiday Songs not just because it’s a relic from a different blogging era, but because George Harrison’s longing for clarity, peace, and pure-hearted connection feels even more resonant now than it did when I first wrote about it twelve years ago.
“Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)” isn’t technically a holiday song. But thematically, emotionally, and spiritually, it slots right into the season. Especially with that mix of gratitude, yearning, quiet reflection, and hope for something better.
So here it is, untouched from 2013: younger-me grappling with George Harrison, spirituality without dogma, and what “peace on Earth” can mean when you feel it in your chest.
I’m not a particularly religious man, by any stretch of the imagination.
I think that’s the rub, really. “Religious man”. As in, religion is a man-made construct: a home-made, grassroots means of interpreting God. And yet also a bureaucratic, flawed, collective means of interpreting the Universe, Creation, Existence, and Eternity.
It just doesn’t work all that well with me. I’ve often found simpler means of expressing spiritual longing, confusion, thankfulness, understanding, and joy — like enjoying the music of George Harrison.
George was always the “spiritual” Beatle, and that always seemed a bit… trivializing to me. Like John was the witty agitprop poet, Paul was the prettyboy songwriter showman, Ringo was Ringo, and George… the quiet spiritual one. As if his foray into sitars, Eastern meditation, and spiritualism were just 60s trappings he adopted because it was the fashion du jour. Balderdash. It was part and parcel of his being long before (and after) it became the “fashionable” thing to do.
Well anyway… the kickoff track from his 1973 Living In The Material World, “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)” reads as a simple poem, a prayer really… wanting to know God, to understand Him, free from dogma and restriction, that absolute purity of Love. It speaks deeply to me. And I think it makes for a beautiful holiday song, no matter what your faith (or even if you eschew faith).
Mills
A South Florida native and part-time iguana, Mills has slaved in the mine-pits of Information Technology since 1995, finding solace in writing about the things he loves like music, fitness, movies, theme parks, gaming, and Norwegian Hammer Prancing. He has written and published hundreds (thousands?) of reviews since 2000, because Geeking Out over your obsessions is the Cosmic Order Of Things. He is, at heart, a 6'3 freewheeling Aquarius forever constrained by delusions of adequacy.