Lyric for the holidays

Happy holidays to all, and Merry Christmas to those of the Christian faith.

I didn't start hearing the song "Happy XMas (War is Over)" a lot until December 1979, eight years after John Lennon and Yoko Ono wrote, recorded and released it as the war raged in Vietnam. The gap of familiarity probably had more to do with my isolation growing up in a small town in the northern Corn Belt of Illinois.

It was my senior year in high school. (Lennon would be murdered the following December.) I looked out of my second-floor bedroom window, staring into the darkness toward the east and way out of physical view, Chicago, some 100 miles away. There was a clarity to Lennon's words and music, as uncomplicated and timeless as the brittle, starry night.

Brought up and still Catholic, I heard and still hear Christian truths in this song (probably not Lennon's intent). Life and faith are about what you do, inclusion, not exclusion -- the same lessons I heard a couple of blocks in the other direction from my parents' house at St. Patrick's Church.

I've just played "Happy XMas" five times in a row. We believe and hope in a God of infinite second chances. I hear a challenge: "What you are you going to do with the next year, the next day, the next hour, you will be given?"

So this is Christmas
And what have you done?
Another year over
And a new one just begun

And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young

A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

And so this is Christmas
For weak and for strong
For rich and the poor ones
The world is so wrong
And so happy Christmas
For black and for white
For yellow and red ones
Let's stop all the fight