This Year's Christmas Song Is ...

... and I hope I'm not repeating myself, but it's one I have wanted to highlight for some time: "This Christmas," performed by soul artist Donny Hathaway and written by him and Nadine McKinnor.  With no disrespect to other hits and classics, if Black America had a Christmas song, it would be "This Christmas."  This is a perfect Christmas-themed tune created with soul in mind.  It is rhapsodically joyous, and it hits all the tropes of the holiday and the season in a fresh way.  Plus, I like how the time signature of the song changes, if only for one note: It's 4/4 until the last part of the horns sting, which only lasts three beats.  That little change makes "This Christmas" stand out from most other seasonal standards.  In many, many ways, it's a perfect Christmas song, and I feel really bad that I didn't appreciate it until recently:

The story of Donny Hathaway, however, is as tragic as his song is glorious.  He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and in the mid-seventies he was in and out of hospitals so much it derailed his career.  One day in 1979, a recording session was cancelled because Hathaway was having bouts of mental illness again.  That evening, he jumped 15 floors from his New York City hotel to his death.

So sad that a man who gave the world this beautiful song met such an untimely end.  But we get to celebrate his contribution to the Christmas canon this time every year.

For those who celebrate, Merry Christmas.