Day 33 - The hope of Christmas

Who has watched the 1954 Christmas staple White Christmas? If your house is anything like mine, this film is something of a yearly ritual. Seeing the stage version at the Curve in Leicester was my first experience of a theatre trip and the film today remains a staple of my Christmas checklist (and my mum’s!). And even if you have never seen the film before, I can almost guarantee you can sing the first line to its eponymous song ‘I'm dreaming of a White Christmas’.

The song appears twice in the track list – as the first song of the film and as the last, and the settings around the songs could not be more different. The first time around, we see Captain Bob Wallace, played by Bing Crosby, singing the song by himself, accompanied by a tinny wind-up music box, on a makeshift stage in the middle of a bombed-out building in the depths of the winter of 1944, to an audience of tired, despondent soldiers. The song is almost haunting, especially with the background sounds studded with explosions mixing with the cheerful words. By contrast, at the end of the film, the singers include Bob, his friend and former comrade Phil Davis (Danny Kaye) and their partners Betty Haynes (Rosemary Clooney) and Judy Haynes (Vera-Ellen), accompanied by a host of backup singers, a full orchestra on a proper stage in flamboyant costumes and to an audience which, although it contains the veterans of the first singing, is as far removed from war as is possible.

And in this contrast – we find the message of Christmas; Hope.

The song, which I encourage you to listen to both versions of, is a song filled with hope. The main character is literally hoping for snow in everything they do to prepare for Christmas – writing cards namely. It doesn’t take a music theorist or English Literature student to figure out the meanings here! They imagine children playing in, and trees shimmering with, the snow as it falls. They also wish for the listener to share in the experience – not just this year, but every Christmas. I’m sure we can all relate to that feeling – hoping for the snow we see blanketing the front of our Christmas cards to blanket the landscape outside of our windows at Christmas.

And if you think about it, isn’t that what the Christmas story is about? We hope as we travel through advent that we will see the birth of Jesus, the light come into the world for each of us. But not only do we hope for it for us this year, hopefully, we hope for it for all, for everyone, for every year to come.

We hope that the light will not be shielded from anyone and that more may find it in the year ahead. Much like in the closing moments of the film, where the entire audience sings a rousing chorus of ‘I’m dreaming of a White Christmas’ and the set pulls back to reveal the thick blanket of snow falling on Vermont, at Christmas we hope that everyone will join together in love and unity, finding the light of Jesus who comes into the world silently, like the snow falls, but leaves an unerasable image like that of the snowfall on our Christmas cards.

‘May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.’ (Romans 15:13)

Merry Christmas

Harry Booton