The meaning and background of the song I’ll be home for Christmas can be seen in many lights.
Originally written in 1943, it was a song set to the scene of a soldier during wartime when they were not able to be home with families and loved ones. Separated soldiers during World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam conflict and of course the Iraq conflict, all played on a similar stage as the role of the distant soldier, reminiscently sung in this historic song.
But the concept of I’ll Be Home for Christmas and the words that were written can be interpreted many ways. They can be set on a different stage, with different characters playing the part.
Whether a person lives far from home and cannot be with friends or family during the holidays or even for special events. If someone is ill or in the hospital. Even as we saw during covid where families were separated by quarantine and regulations.
As I sit here listening to this song and singing along, it actually has a much deeper meaning than I think I ever imagined. When I hear these words…
I’ll be home for Christmas
You can count on me
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents by the tree
Christmas eve will find you
Where the love light gleams
I’ll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams
…these words hit me deeper as I see my age growing so quickly it seems, my children getting older and loved ones passing on.
As I listen to these words now in my life, I hear and see a history of my Christmases as a child, as in young adult in my traveling around the US and living far from home, as a young mother whose children experienced the same traditions that I did when I was a kid and who now are growing up and planning their future.
To me these words touch on my history, my experiences, my life and the people who have been in it. It speaks of all the traditions and memories that have long since passed and how every year I long to experience those things once again.
Now before you say it, I am aware that we all relive these experiences and memories through our passing of traditions down to our children, friends and family members. This has been a blessing for me in having four children.
I feel though it kind of goes a little deeper than just passing on those traditions and reliving those experiences. Places I know I will never be able to be again. Experiences with the people who are no longer here, who have passed on, grown up or moved away. People who no longer have the same feelings for Christmas or the holidays.
Sometimes this longing to be “Home for Christmas” even relates to our lives as older people who may be in a different situation than we’ve always been in. Maybe we no longer live in the home that we built, or that we’ve lived in a majority of our life. Maybe we’ve had to move or have had to give up our independence.
I’ll be home for Christmas if only in my dreams… These words reach out to all of us, and quite simply if we let it, those good feelings and memories can change our hearts every day of the year. To soften any hardness we may have developed over the years and bring back the true spirit of goodness, peace and love, so that we may be able to still embrace it while we are creating new memories and new chapters in our lives.