At the time I wrote "God Bless This Christmas Season," about eleven years ago, I had only written one other Advent/Christmas song and didn’t know if I’d ever write another. I’m a performing songwriter and in those days I didn’t have many opportunities to perform Christmas songs and consequently not much motivation to write them. Besides, it’s a thoroughly intimidating genre to get mixed up with. There’s a lot of tradition involved here and folks have their favorites: songs that have stood the test of time; familiar, beloved songs telling familiar, beloved stories. So thinking it might be the last Christmas song I’d ever write, I wanted to try to deal with the subject in somewhat general terms on one hand, and to try and get at the heart of the thing on the other.
This song has three verses. In the first three lines of each of the verses I address some of the ways we encounter and engage in the Christmas season, and in particular Advent. We set aside our usual routine and shift our focus to family and friends; to being merciful and compassionate and hopeful; to being open to spiritual transformation.
The last line of each verse cuts to the chase –“May the Christ in each of us be born on Christmas day.” In these four weeks of Advent we wait and we watch, attending to our deepest longing and preparing ourselves. As we spiral round once again to the story of the birth of Christ we find reason to hope that in its celebration we’ll be able to give voice and action and earthly manifestation to the eternity that dwells within each of us.
The song’s bridge expresses the idea that this season – Advent, Christmas, Epiphany – is a part of the year that exists almost outside of the year and that echoes with the voices of angels and that resonates with the sacred and the timeless. If you listen to the recording you’ll find that there are a bunch of Alleluias at the end of the bridge. When I perform this song, I love to get the audience to represent the angel voices by joining in on the Alleluias. Feel free to sing along as you listen.
God Bless This Christmas Season
words and music © Garrison Doles
1.
God bless this Christmas season that finds us in our haste
Let us quit our daily labors and prepare a separate place
And gather friends and family blessings to receive
And may the Christ in each of us be born on Christmas Eve
2.
God bless the Christmas season, mid-winter’s festival
With mercy and compassion may all our hearts be full
All the hope of Christmas is ours to believe
May the Christ in each of us be born on Christmas Eve
bridge
All the year we are turning, moving through the rounds
Carried on the daily tide
While the Yule log’s burning we hearken to the sound
Of angel voices that fill this holy night
3.
God bless this Christmas season and may it touch our hearts
Prepare us for the changes that heaven imparts
And here upon the earth was once a child conceived
And may the Christ in each of us be born on Christmas Eve