I have two confessions to make before we start.
First, I can't claim to be deeply familiar with Shane McGowan's catalogue. Aside from the song I'm going to talk about here, I know a couple of songs from St. Patrick's Day sing-alongs and a couple more because U2 has on occasion used them to rev up their crowds before they take the stage.
Second, I don't really like Christmas. It's my least favourite time of year (I hate February a lot but at least the days feel longer). It could be somewhat enjoyable, but the holiday saturates everything so heavily it makes me want to fall into a coma until New Year's Day.
Having put those things out there, I can now say that easily my favourite thing about Christmas is Fairytale of New York by Shane McGowan. So let's talk about Fairytale of New York by Shane McGowan, who died today at age 65.
A lot of artists put out Christmas music, and they try to make it sound like it's not actually that much of a departure from how they usually sound and the things they usually write about. They usually do this by covering an established Christmas song in their own style. And these efforts, even when they sound good, rarely escape the perception of being a commercial chore.
Most can't write original songs about Christmas, and it's not because the territory is too well-trodden. People are still delivering songs about love that are annually incorporated into the pop culture canon, and they're not likely to stop anytime soon. That's because whether you're falling in love or falling out of it, those feelings feel unique to you. You can talk to someone who knows what it feels like, but you can't find anyone who feels exactly what you're feeling at that exact moment. And everything along that arc is universal even while it feels individual. So our culture is miraculously still capable of producing new takes on love.
The feelings associated with Christmas however, run on a calendar. We're all supposed to feel the same thing at the same time. There are Christmas songs about what you're feeling at each specific point along the arc of the holiday. That doesn't mean that everyone feels the same way about Christmas, but there really isn't room in the festive pop culture firmament for songs about hating the holiday, or about the messages you have to repeat to yourself so you can get through family gatherings without having a panic attack. The artists who thread this needle most successfully are the ones who can weave in the universal feelings of love, loneliness, and heartbreak with the narrowly acceptable themes of Christmas (Christmas will/won't be special if/because I have/don't have you here).
Fairytale of New York does none of these things. McGowan, who was born on Christmas, doesn't treat it like a fantasy or a utopia, but as a meagre comfort. Not as something to be excited about, but something we can't escape anymore than the next gas bill. The thing is he also does all this without dumping on the holiday. The Christmas of his world is in fact special. There is something about it that's aspirational for all of us, and it's absence leave us wanting. But where the song turns its back on other holiday music efforts is in assuming that having the love of our life with us solves any of our problems.
The object of Fairytale's protagonist's adoration isn't just present in his life, she's present in the song. McGowan spent the first verse making us think that our hero's Christmas has been ruined because his demons have driven away the woman of his dreams. While that's more downtrodden than we usually hear while trimming the tree, we're still in fairly familiar holiday love-song territory. McGowan then flipped the table, turning the story over to the object of our hero's affections, performed by the lovely Krista MacColl, who explains in no uncertain terms, in the first person, that you can be with the one you want on our society's favourite day of the year and it can still be shite.
Where other musicians often stumble in trying to make their Christmas music seem like a natural extension of their sound and style, McGowan didn't flinch at showing us a hard but still hopeful holiday experience. Casual fans like me keep coming around to him at Christmastime because his was one of the few versions of the holiday where even if we couldn't fully relate to the Fairytale's characters, we still felt included. He always seemed to embrace more nakedly than other popular songwriters the fact that (for most people) life is hard and unfair, and that the people we keep close to us are ultimately the best thing we've got going.
I got married a few months before I turned 30. I've been married for 16 years. Over those years I've come to understand that when relationships last deep into adulthood, it's because you and your partner grasp that your commitment isn't about living a fantasy. It's the two of you having each other's backs while life hits you with all that its got. It's finding joy together while facing constant battles. I recognize that understanding in McGowan's Fairytale.
Those of us who detest Christmas don't really want to. As I said earlier, it's not the holiday itself as much as our capitalist society's need to have you buy in with your whole soul to its unique and all-encompassing joyfulness. And the accompanying notion that having anything but a wonderful Christmas full of togetherness and merriment makes you an object of pity. Christmas itself can have a lot going for it. But we make it hard for the holiday itself to satisfy our needs by weighing it down with absurd expectations.
Shane McGowan threw away all those expectations. I love his Christmas. I can listen to Fairytale of New York and feel wistful. The characters in the song see deep beauty in the holidays, but they grasp that its beauty lies not in presents or Santa, but in what we mean to each other. It strips away everything that every other song claims makes Christmas special, and in doing so shows you that there actually is something special about Christmas.