One of the most powerful things about music is that it is the soundtrack of our lives. Fellow music fanatic Sharon Hepworth started a music challenge on Twitter for the month of July. Each day, fans around the world will select a song from their life and describe what it means to us. These are my songs. #SoundtrackToYourLife
Day 3
The soundtrack to our lives often hit an emotional crescendo around the holidays. The songs remind us of childhood. Of family. Of friends. Of home. The famine in Ethiopia seemed worlds way from my Christmas experience. I was fortunate to never have to worry about food on the table or a roof over my head. My holiday experience was a privileged one. But there’s something powerfully uniting about this Band Aid classic. Christmas holds a special spiritual significance in my life and my family members’ lives. And this song is a sobering reminder that Christmas was never about gifts and decorations. It was never about us. It’s a story of the world.
It’s significant that one of the most famous Christmas songs of all time was an anti-famine fundraising effort for Ethiopia. Written and spearheaded by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure, it had a Christmas sound to it. But the lyrics weren’t Christmas-like on the surface. The song’s meaning can be summarized by this line in the first verse: “At Christmas time, we let in light and we banish shade”. The lyrics told a different, more powerful Christmas story. Then the musicians and singers did the rest of the work. Sting. Bono. Duran Duran. George Michael. Paul Young. Phil Collins. Boy George. Siobhan Fahey. The list goes on. This was Christmas with a social conscience, indelibly etched into my childhood.
“At Christmas time, we let in light and we banish shade.”