Ron here. I, too, will be having a melancholic Christmas, but I think for different reasons than Amba. My best friends mother passed away suddenly, almost 2 weeks ago (!), and this has caused her and her family considerable difficulty, as Grandma was a big part of financially helping a family with 2 kids and a lot of struggling themselves. I just saw her mother at a wonderful Thanksgiving and now… gone. I'm still having a hard time grasping it myself. And me? Things are bad for me and may get worse….I'm trying to keep myself in my home of now 26 years, but I'm having a hard time doing so. Even I'm unsure what will happen, as I have no family of my own to turn to.
But while Peter, Paul and Mary are one way to look at a Gloomy Tinsel Season, I've always chosen another song: Fairytale of New York.
My first thought was, hey, shouldn't this be an Amba song, too? Sure, why not. It's a duet between Shane MacGowan (poster child for British Dentistry) and Kirsty MacColl, and rapidly becoming a New Holiday standard, one I hope to record with my friend CamieVog someday. So, let's hope the New Year brings better things for us all, God bless us.