DEPRESSING CHRISTMAS WITH JOHNNY CASH TO CHEER THINGS UP

I’d never heard Johnny Cash sing Christmas songs. It was a revelation.

Adding to my ignorance, I wasn’t aware of so many depressing Christmas songs.

Maybe it’s the times, or age of man, but Johnny Cash doing spoken word depressing Christmas is a perfect fit.

When he sang a mournful Silent Night he changed how I want to hear it from now on.

But it was the obscure songs that tied the bow.

Things were bare and cold one Christmas Day with no money in a sharecropper’s budget after a lean cotton crop in Arkansas.

But the family had each other and their health.

They noticed no light in the neighbor’s house and took them some nuts and lamp oil.

An old woman came to the door, took the gifts, said thank you, and shut the door quickly.

Such a heartbreaking image drawn with Johnny’s voice puts it on the list of depressing Christmas songs.

Engaging With Depressing Christmas

Christmas As I Knew It

A sharecropped family across the road didn’t have it as good as us
They didn’t even have a light and it was way past dusk
And mama said well I bet they don’t even have coaloil or beans to boil
A log apples cranges and such
Me and Jack took a jar of coal oil and some hicker nuts we’d found
We walked to the sharecropper’s porch and set ’em down
A poor old ragged lady eased open the door
She picked up the coaloil and hickernuts and said
I sure do thank ye and quickly closed the door
We started back home me and Jack and about halfway we stopped looked back
And in the sharecropper’s window at last was a light
So for one of the neighbors and for us it was a good Christmas night

Ringing The Bells For Jim

The father heard church bells at midnight
A wrong time for church bells to chime
He went to the tower, found a little girl there
Said, “Why ring the bells at this time?”

“I’m just ringing the bells for Jim
Please father, ringing the bells for Jim
I’m sorry, I’m cryin’ but my brother Jim’s dyin’
So, I’m ringing the bells for Jim”

Please father, pray for him this Christmas
He’s sick and he’s in so much pain
The doctors all say, he’ll be gone any day
So, I must ring the bells again

This Christmas

Do what you can where you are to raise Christmas cheer up.

Help someone smile, give one back. It’s a smiling time.

Do the things that matter.

One of those things is reaffirming your feelings. Yes, those feelings.

No matter what kind of crusty, ornery, truth speaking oracle you see in yourself, go ahead and take break.

Work on the moment you share with someone you care about. That moment.

Whether a wife, husband, mom or dad, or grandparent, try to perk up a little more than usual.

Aim for somewhere between trained ‘active listening’ and interested relative.

It’s not a contest where the winner stakes the most inflatable decorations in the yard, hangs the most lights from the highest tree with a crane, or hires a choir of Dickens’ carolers for their living room.

The Winners Get That Christmasy Feeling.

When the days of December are numbered,
And the earth begs it’s snowflakes to fall…
That’s the time of the year that Christmas is here,
With peace and goodwill for all.

How I love that Christmas feelin’
How I treasure it’s friendly glow…
See the way a stranger greets you,
Just as though you’d met him Christmas’s ago!

Christmas helps you to remember,
To do what other folks hold dear…
What a blessed place the world would be,
If we had the Christmas feelin’ all year!

If you or anyone needs a good depressing Christmas booster?

Two words: Johnny. Cash.