Happy Christmas (War is Over)

Christmas isn't a big deal to me personally (for me, New Year's day is a larger event), but I do like listening to Christmas songs. They always cheer me up and make me reflect the year. And the song that really makes me reflect is Happy Christmas (War is Over) by John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

I'm not old enough to call myself the Beatles generation and I was still in elementary school when John Lennon got shot (I don't even remember the event). But one day, I happened to read All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. In it, John and Yoko explain what their perspectives were, why they did certain things, etc. in their own words. It truly conveys their strength in doing what they want to do regardless of what everyone else thought or said. It's not that they don't see or hear the public reactions - they just instinctively know that's not as important as what they want to do. John taking years off just to look after Sean, or John and Yoko separating for a while, and so on - reading what was behind those scenes was inspirational. After that, I started to appreciate John and Yoko's music.

What really ticks me about Happy Christmas (War is Over) isn't the fact that they are singing their message that war could be over if we wanted. It's not the Harlem Community Choir that you hear in the background. It's Yoko's singing. I never noticed that she was singing along in the background until I read the book. But when I realized that the woman's singing voice, which wasn't so great and didn't really go well with the Choir, belonged to Yoko, I thought: "Oh, she's just doing what she wanted to do and enjoying herself". I mean, if you listen closely, you can tell that she's having a ball! Never mind if she's good or if her voice goes well with the entire music! And that, moves me and makes me reflect my life.

Sometimes what moves people isn't perfection.