When I was nine, my older brother gave me a 45rpm record. While always generous of heart and spirit, my brother was never much of a giver of material things … at least not when we were living under the same roof. He wasn’t stingy, I don’t guess. I think he just wanted to teach me the value of a dollar, or maybe just the value of his dollars. So this gift was something special, a rare event. The record was in a simple blue sleeve, the kind with the center cut out to show the label. And what was the song?
It remains one of my favorites of all time and never fails to make me simultaneously happy and wistful and nostalgic. It is the perfect song for Christmas Eve, though it is far more of a New Year’s Day song that one for the holiday. Twenty-three years later, it probably hasn’t aged too well and has a post-70s singer-songwriter sheen to it that some might avoid for being too saccharine, but so be it.
With that in mind, I’ll share it with all of you. Enjoy.
Listen to “Same Old Lang Syne” by Dan Fogelberg
And hey, by the way … Merry Christmas.
