Jaci Dawn

Laurelle’s comment on my tree prompted me to post my favorite Christmas song.

This is my all-time Christmas favorite. It may seem really corny, but listen to the words. Forget that it is about a cartoon dog and his imaginary world – listen to the words.

The words are great, but they are only half the reason this is my all-time, hands-down favorite Christmas song. In 1966, I was just 10 years old and in the 5th grade. Life was terrible. I was miserably “unpopular” (whatever the heck that is): a skinny little girl who looked more like a boy with her “pixie” haircut. I didn’t “get” school and barely eked out average grades. I had no idea that I was simply a late bloomer: I was certain I was doomed to failure. I cried a lot.

I had a few friends and one of those was a girl named Trudi Elmore. Trudi had a vivid imagination like I did, so we hit it off with any game that involved playing “pretend.” We had some favorites: “pretend we’re Pepé le Pew and Chilly Willy” or “pretend we’re wild horses” (a perennial favorite) and “Snoopy Vs. the Red Baron”.

The latter involved getting to the swingset in the playground before anyone else. There was a crack in the pavement under the swingset. We’d swing as high as we could (she was always braver than I was an would get so high the swing would “buck”, which would get us in trouble with the playground monitor). On the back-swing, we were over Allied soil, getting refueled or drinking root beers. Then we’d swing forward and over the crack in the pavement: GERMANY!

Ratttattat-tat-tat! Boom! Boom! We were Snoopy and the Red Baron was getting a full dose of Allied righteous wrath.

Over and over and over again.

I thought I died and went to Heaven when I found this CD in a discount bin.

Some classics, Eh?

Anyway, the point of this is the song: Snoopy’s Christmas.

Trudi (who could sing – the eternal curse of my life is that no matter how hard I try, I cannot sing. I’m not tone-deaf, but I am flat) would sing that song as we “flew” in the swings over the Allied Nations and Germany, destroying Hitler and all his minions and (especially) the notorious Red Baron (“curse you, Red Baron!”).

For twenty minutes, two times a day, plus recess, I was a world-conqueror with my friend, Trudi.

That is why I love that song so much.

Epilogue: when we were 20, Trudi was diagnosed with a brain tumor. She was a semester from achieving her Bachelor’s in Theology and well on her way to becoming an ordained Methodist minister. The tumor on her brain was deemed inoperable in the USA, so her parents (who had already lost one child) took her to Paris and paid the top surgeons in the world to operate. They got the tumor, but Trudi’s brilliant brain was exposed to oxygen for far too long and she was left a mental vegetable who lived out the rest of her life in a group home in Reno. The long letters we wrote to each other were replaced by long Christmas notes between her mom and I until the event of her mother’s death a couple years ago. Trudi died about five years earlier.

Now – instead of crying, go back up to that link and play that song again.

“Christmas Bells, those Christmas Bells

Ringing through the land

Ringing peace for all the world

And good will to Man.”

“Merry Christmas, My Friend!”