Approaching Christmas Like a Celine Dion Song
It's not about reducing the noise, but finding the right noise to hear.
Christmas is not without hassle, stress, annoyances, and of course, noise. Lots of noise. Shopping noise, waiting in line to buy overpriced gifts for people you don’t really want to buy gifts for. Traffic noise, worst of all the Jay Gilstrap commercials on the radio. Social media noise, full of all the moms (and dads?) posting daily pictures of the innovative ways their Elf on the Shelf is loitering around the house this year. (Not being on social media now for five years, I can only hope this trend has died a quiet death.)
But there are noises this time of year worth our attention. The bells ringing at the end of It’s A Wonderful Life. Children ripping away glittery paper to find Santa brought the exact gift they’d asked for. And of course, every single time Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas” pops up on your Spotify playlist.
But most of these things, along with other enjoyable sounds, become nothing but background noise. Distant audio waves distracting us from something else.
Enter Celine Dion.
About Rose and Jack
Something I’ve long held misplaced pride in is never having watched the blockbuster movie Titanic from start to finish.
I remember the movie coming out when I was a junior in high school. I remember the girls all talking about how sweet and heartbreaking it was. I also remember their boyfriends giving me a quick eye roll, silently wishing they had spent those three hours in the theater doing something, almost anything else.
Even not watching it, I couldn’t escape discussions around it. I knew the plot, the general storyline of a rich girl falling for a poor boy but, plot twist! She’s already engaged to a different man, one more on her level of status and power.
Another thing I couldn’t escape was that song. That Celine Dion song. The one with the flute at the beginning. The one talking about “My Heart Will Go On.” A song that forced me to get up from playing my PlayStation and change the dial when it came on. Because as a 16-year-old, I did not have four minutes and forty seconds to spend on that. No sir. Not me. You will not hear any Celine Dion song, especially that one, the one from a sappy fictional romance soundtrack attached to a tragic historical event. Not gonna happen.
Too Much of a Good Thing
Spotify tells me my most listened-to podcast of 2023 was, once again, Rob Harvilla’s 60 Songs That Explain the ‘90s.
Harvilla recently released a book discussing many of the songs he covers in the podcasts. He opens by talking about Celine Dion and her god-like stature in the 1990s:
She sings hard, man. Do you get what I’m saying? I don’t want to belabor this. She sings hard even at her softest; she sings incomprehensibly loud even at her quietest. She is everything louder than everything else. She is the too much that will never be enough. She is the Final Boss of Popular Song. I picture her towering over the 1990s like a benevolent colossus, like a Quebec-born Godzilla with a sparkly microphone, like a volcano that can serenade itself.
Okay. So let’s consider this. It is an inescapable truth that Celine Dion is an amazing singer. But like a lot of amazing things, we simply cast aside their greatness because it’s expected. It’s routine. It’s another amazing sunset that slides into the horizon unnoticed because, hey, the sun set just yesterday and it’s bound to do it again tomorrow. Rinse. Wash. Repeat.
Much like another holiday season that creeps up on us and blitzes through until our bank accounts and physical energy are depleted just in time for us to plan the amazing things we won’t do in 2024.
About the Power of Love
Christmas is noisy. It’s too much. It’s glitter and twinkling lights and nonstop holiday music. It’s debates over eggnog and trying to remember if you got your aunt this same gift last year. It’s planning parties and planning ways to get out of parties.
But much like a Celine Dion song, to truly appreciate the season, we have to slow down and focus. Two things we’re all terrible at doing.
I would’ve been around 12 years old when her song “The Power Of Love” hit the radio. So forgive me if the chorus didn’t exactly resonate with me at the time:
Because I’m your lady/ and you are my man
Whenever you reach for me/ I’ll do all that I can
Nope. Not getting me to listen to that. There are too many levels of Sonic the Hedgehog to beat. There’s too much baseball card organizing for me to do. STAY AWAY, CELINE!
But dang it if some 30 years later, I can hear it and appreciate it. The overwhelming glamour of her voice. You can picture the guitar bowing in worship as she belts the chorus. How the microphone blushes at her breath. How women swoon hearing it. How men switch the song lest their own emotions get wrecked during the song’s bridge.
Christmas Should Be Like This
Try this. Just once this Christmas, test yourself. Maybe you’re gathered with family watching your grandmother gift hideous sweaters to the grandkids. Maybe you’re avoiding questions from distant relatives about your career, your relationship status, or anything else you’d prefer to not talk about.
Do this. Pull out your phone. Put in your Air Pods. And play a Celine Dion song on full blast. Doesn’t matter the song. Power Of Love, My Heart Will Go On, Beauty and the Beast, whatever. And close your eyes. Get lost in it. The sheer, uncontainable beauty of it.
Then open your eyes and look around. The imperfect family. The overbaked cookies. The gift of tube socks that match the pack of tube socks you got last year. Soak it in. All the beauty of the season. The lights, the sweets, the hugs, the moments that will only happen right now because Christmas, this Christmas, will only ever be here right now.
About Rose and Jack (Again)
We flipped through the channels the other night and came upon the scene where Rose is floating in the freezing water and Jack is floating to his death in the freezing water. I began my eye roll, questioning out loud as to why Rose couldn’t just scoot over and make room for Jack.
But not my wife. Not my daughters. They were transfixed by the love story. And as the closing credits ran, and Celine sang, I wondered how many beautiful things in my life I’ve missed because I was too annoyed, too distracted, too prideful to appreciate what was right in front of me. The holidays. The madness of it all.
Maybe all I needed to ever do was spend those four minutes and forty seconds listening. Listening only to her sing. Everything else can wait. There’s beauty to behold here. For all of us. It’s just a matter of slowing down, focusing, and immersing ourselves in it.
Sure, the sun will set tomorrow, but the sun will set today only once. I’m begging you (and myself) to not miss it.