You know, you get these Christmas songs that sound like they were engineered in a lab by corporate elves for maximum jingle-per-minute. Cue the bells, the pipe organs, and the lush layers of quasi-harmonic heavenly choirs. All good, of course.
But then there’s Emmylou Harris, who just opens her mouth in song and suddenly it’s the holiday season flowing through your bloodstream.
Her 1979 take on Christmas Time’s A-Comin’ is bluegrass joy in motion: bright fiddle, dancing banjo, Emmylou’s voice gliding over everything like a reassuring winter scarf in the breeze on a cold day. Uptempo, warm, and absolutely buzzing with that unmistakable feeling of moving toward something meaningful and wonderful.
This isn’t a song about Christmas in the abstract. It’s that full-on expression of Christmas and coming home. And for whatever “home” is for you. A front porch light glowing in the distance. A kitchen full of familiar voices. A tree in the corner of a familiar room lit up and aglow. It’s the anticipation, the warmth, the gathering-in.
What makes Emmylou’s version magical is its sincerity. It’s joyful without being loud, nostalgic without being dusty, spiritual without preaching. When she sings snowflakes a-fallin’, you believe the snow is actually falling somewhere. Just for her.
But also for you.
And for all of us
Christmas Time’s A-Comin’ is December distilled: initial anticipation, then joy, generating warmth, and going home.
Just a perfect uptempo shot of holiday heart.
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.