The Joys of Having A Blue Christmas
On Joni Mitchell & My Secular Love Of The Holiday Season
I scour my childhood memories to pinpoint the exact moment when I was introduced to the concept of Christmas. Was it the jewel tones of the baubles against the faded green of the plastic evergreen on display fronts that I came to associate with a curated sense of home™, imitable through the tasteful combination of warm color palettes and antique wooden furniture yet viably out of reach? Was it the feasibly secular yet markedly Christian programming that took over kid’s TV from November on that made me seriously consider converting to Christianity at the ripe age of seven, even though my family had never wilfully imposed religion on me? Was it the self-evident rightoussness of the idea that my year round well behaviour would and should be rewarded with presents that made me embrace the poetic justice of Santa like no other fictional father figure (with the exception of perhaps Atticus Finch later on)? Whatever the ridicilously friviolous reason I fell in love with Christmas. Or at least the aesthetics of it. Which in our current hyperreal hellscape of a world is basically the same thing: A simulacra so deeply entrenched in the simulation that you can hardly tell the myth from its origin. I should know: I have picked multiple arguments over the years to debunk the urban legend alleging that Coca Cola’s marketing team is behind the ubiquitous red of virtually every commercial depiction of Father Christmas since the 50s.
But no matter how many dirty looks I got from my peers for asking about the specifics of voluntary conversion in our compulsory religion class in middle school I was a fully devout Christmas-phile: complete with elaborate wishlists pinned on the refrigerator, a ye-old-faithful store bought plastic tree which gave me rashes if I so much as brushed up against its ‘leaves’ and of course an ever expanding playlist of beloved yet overplayed tunes that evoked feelings I assumed most people, with the looming approach of winter, experienced this time of year: the somberness of the bitter morning cold, the forelorn longing for familiar comforts of childhood, the apprehensive fear of getting older as your life is passing you by…
Fortunately for the winter weary and oversensitive like me there is an album that epitomizes the melancholia of the holiday season in all its self-pitying glory: I am of course referring to Joni Mitchell’s 1971 masterpiece Blue. Bearing the same name as my favourite color, Blue is an album I have always inexplicably felt connected to and not just because I was born on the day of its 28 year anniversary (A Cancer Sun if I’ve ever seen one!). Although generally referred to as the quintessential '‘break up record’ within Mitchell’s discography the album itself covers much more emotional ground than the familiar aches of romantic heartbreak. From lamenting what could’ve been with the daughter she gave away for adoption in Little Green to grappling with Heimweh induced loneliness in California, each one of the ten tracks sheds light on a different shade of the blues.
Even in an album of classics there are standouts: in the case of Blue the first two that come to mind are ‘A Case Of You’ & ‘River’ each representing one end of the album’s vast emotional spectrum. The former is a poet’s avowal of devotion to her wine-like lover: rich yet not overbearing, a testament to Mitchell’s prowress as a lyricist, which continues to inspire singer-songwriters to this day. The latter is a piano elegy set to the tune of Jingle Bells, mourning the end of a relationship and fantasizing about a fittingly seasonal escape route: skating on a frozen river and dissapearing into the misty horizon for a peace of mind. Or as Mitchell has herself put it “A Christmas song for people who are lonely at Christmas”. “It’s coming on Christmas / They’re cutting down trees” she sings in the opening lines, evocative of her biggest commercial hit “Big Yellow Taxi” where she reprimands the irony of the trees that are cut down just to be put on display in a museum. This time though instead of spearheading flower children’s half-hearted campaign for environmentalism she finds the loneliness of decorating a Christmas tree alone unbearable. “I’m so hard to handle/ I’m selfish and I’m sad / Now I’ve gone and lost the best baby I’ve ever had” she bemoans in self-pity: Being heartbroken is hard enough as it is without being surrounded by familial strangers who pry into your relationship status seemingly out of a moral obligation to show how much they care. The feelings of alienation brought about by the holiday season are as customary as the once-pagan traditions that accompany it. And with having had such an acute sense of the Christmas blues more than half a century prior, is it any wonder that Mitchell provides the soundtrack to one of the the most gut-wrenching 3 minutes in holiday romcom history?