One More Time For Eternity...

Singing in the new year for you all with this merry little carol steeped in winter glory.

lyrics

1 The holly and the ivy
when they are both full grown,
of all the trees that are in the wood
the holly bears the crown.
Refrain:
The rising of the sun
and the running of the deer,
the playing of the merry organ,
sweet singing in the choir.
2 The holly bears a blossom,
white as the lily flower,
and Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ,
to be our sweet Saviour. [Refrain]
3 The holly bears a berry,
as red as any blood,
and Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
to do poor sinners good. [Refrain]
4 The holly bears a prickle,
as sharp as any thorn,
and Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
on Christmas day in the morn. [Refrain]
5 The holly bears a bark,
as bitter as any gall,
and Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
for to redeem us all. [Refrain]
6 The holly and the ivy,
when they are both full grown,
of all the trees that are in the wood
The holly bears the crown. [Refrain]

The Rebel Jesus

A Jackson Browne 'carol' from the days ( late 60, early 70s) when Christmas songs were Jesus-bearded hippy protests against commercialisation and losing your soul to gain the world.

All the streets are filled with laughter and light

And the music of the season

And the merchants' windows are all bright

With the faces of the children

And the families hurrying to their homes

While the sky darkens and freezes

Will be gathering around the hearths and tables

Giving thanks for God's graces

And the birth of the rebel Jesus

Well they call him by 'the Prince of Peace'

And they call him by 'the Savior'

And they pray to him upon the seas

And in every bold endeavor

And they fill his churches with their pride and gold

While their faith in him increases

But they've turned the nature that I worship in

From a temple to a robber's den

In the words of the rebel Jesus

Well we guard our world with locks and guns

And we guard our fine possessions

And once a year when Christmas comes

We give to our relations

And perhaps we give a little to the poor

If the generosity should seize us

But if any one of us should interfere

In the business of why there are poor

They get the same as the rebel Jesus

But pardon me if I have seemed

To take the tone of judgement

For I've no wish to come between

This day and your enjoyment

In a life of hardship and of earthly toil

There's a need for anything that frees us

So I bid you pleasure

And I bid you cheer

From a heathen and a pagan

On the side of the rebel Jesus

Christmas in Paradise

Mary Gauthier's 2002 alt-country Christmas song set in a town called Paradise. The lyrics form a typical country music first-person narrative, realistic and gritty about the subject - in this case Christmas (so not a chirpy pop song to overspend in the supermarket by). The alternative aspect is that the narrator is giving a homeless person’s perspective of the season ; and that the gritty realism about the material poverty is actually the means by which the festive cheer and love shine through.

Davy stole a Christmas Tree

From K-Mart last night

Red ribbons and silver bells

Angels dressed in white

He tied it to the bridge rail

Where passing cars could see

Did a little dance up there

Looked down and smiled at me

My bed is a lawn chair

Cushions keep it soft

I sleep in the open air

Under the Southern Cross

Next to the golf course

By the Hyatt Hotel

Davy he's a friend of mine

And we get along pretty well

Christmas in paradise

Under the Cow Key Bridge

Where the warm breeze blows so nice

And the landlord forgives

Snowbirds on the golf course

Wear Bermuda shorts and polo shirts

Some play pretty good

Some play so bad it hurts

We pick up their golf balls

That fly over the fence

We shine them up a little bit

Sell them back for fifty cents

Christmas in paradise

Under the Cow Key Bridge

Where the warm breeze blows so nice

And the landlord forgives

I won't lie we just get by

But we'll be eating good tonight

Christmas dinner's at five o'clock

Over at the Church of Light

They don't care who you are

They don't ask what you done

Come on down and bring a friend

There's plenty for everyone

Christmas in paradise

Under the Cow Key Bridge

Where the warm breeze blows so nice

And the landlord forgives

The radio plays Christmas songs

While we get high

And Davy shouts "Merry Christmas, y'all"

To the cars passing by

Davy shouts "Merry Christmas, y'all"

To the cars passing by

A Fairy Tale of New York

A much punkier and lost Irish dream take on Christmas than the Leninist laments we grew up with - from the Pogues from 1987. The title is taken from a novel by Irish author JP Donleavy. The song narrates the story of an Irish couple striving to pursue their dreams in New York. Set on Christmas Eve, the eternal romance and hope of Christmas contrasts with the gritty reality but both are given full whack by the song. 

It was Christmas Eve, babe

In the drunk tank

An old man said to me

"Won't see another one"

And then he sang a song

"The Rare Old Mountain Dew"

I turned my face away

And dreamed about you

Got on a lucky one

Came in eighteen-to-one

I've got a feeling

This year's for me and you

So happy Christmas

I love you, baby

I can see a better time

When all our dreams come true

They've got cars big as bars, they've got rivers of gold

But the wind goes right through you, it's no place for the old

When you first took my hand on a cold Christmas Eve

You promised me Broadway was waiting for me

You were handsome, you were pretty, queen of New York City

When the band finished playing, they howled out for more

Sinatra was swinging, all the drunks, they were singing

We kissed on a corner, then danced through the night

And the boys of the NYPD choir were singing "Galway Bay"

And the bells were ringing out for Christmas Day

You're a bum, you're a punk, you're an old slut on junk

Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed

You scumbag, you maggot, you cheap, lousy wazzack

Happy Christmas, your arse, I pray God it's our last

And the boys of the NYPD choir, still singing "Galway Bay"

And the bells are ringing out for Christmas Day

"I could have been someone", well, so could anyone

You took my dreams from me when I first found you

I kept them with me, babe, I put them with my own

Can't make it all alone, I've built my dreams around you

And the boys of the NYPD choir, still singing "Galway Bay"

And the bells are ringing out for Christmas Day

A Musical Christmas Card

A Very Happy Christmas 2025 to all our listeners. G/M XX PS. Need a Christmas playlist while you make the mince pies/ wrap the gifts? Try ours! https://soundcloud.com/gareth-calway/sets/the-peacocks-christmas-party

Sergeant Spectre's Lonely Rubber Soul - a novel about the Beatles

#OTD in 1965 (Frank Sinatra's 50th birthday), the Beatles played their last mainland concert tour date in Britain. Two houses of 2,500 at the Capitol Cinema, Cardiff. I've just published a novel about it, the Beatles, the generation gap and the spiritual reawakening of the Sixties. Read it online here - https://calwaygareth.blogspot.com/2025/12/sergeant-spectres-lonely-rubber-soul.html I went up to Liverpool with my son in law for the first time IN MY LIFE to celebrate the moment.

Sergeant Spectre's Lonely Rubber Soul - a Beatles novel

https://calwaygareth.blogspot.com/2025/12/sergeant-spectres-lonely-rubber-soul.html

Two Of Us On The Long and Winding Road To Liverpool

Our beloved son in law helped me fulfil a sweet dream by driving the hard day's long and winding road up to Liverpool where we enjoyed the fabulous Beatles sites and endured Liverpool's abysmal 1-4 home defeat against PSV Eindhoven. On the way up, we played then first six Beatles albums and the other six on the way back, the first time even I have managed this feat. After the game in Molly Malone's we drowned our sorrows and toasted our joys and heard "Fairytale of New York" (which, serendipitously, Maz and I are preparing for Christmas performances at present) and the next morning we went Up The Mersey. It was a fabulous time in a down to earth fairytale city. What all of the Beatles never forgot, even at the height of their later 'suffering artist' stage was that you have to give your hard-working Hamburg and Liverpool cavern-dwellers listeners some joy to hold onto, a song to lift the heart through the eight day week ahead. The non-diegetic sound is the Peacocks' 'escape the factory' cover of A Hard Day's Night and our Beatles medley All You Need Is The Love You Make from our It Was Sixty Years Ago Today EP. https://peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/al... This is what I said there about our A Hard Day's Night The naked truth. The howl. There are some Beatles hits (eg Help- and most of the 'Hard Day's Night' LP, which was mostly written by John) lifted so high into heaven by the Fab Force that the original Lennon howl gets lost- and when he's not making everybody cry with laughter or nailing you with his charismatic ideas, he is howling with pain an awful lot of the time. This is one of those times. This is a working man from Liverpool beaten down by his eight day week, the labouring masses whose only opiate is that sexual partner at home to 'give him everything' (and tenderly) : the extremely tough background they actually came from (Ringo hammering his steelworker drums into high art, those dark F chorded phrases about 'working like a dog') ; which they escaped by being Grammar School bright, fabulously gifted and (lest we forget) grindingly hard working throughout their youth and for a very long time afterwards. What's sublime about the Beatles is that they touch that story with their magic and set the very factories it's about singing it. And take its Cinderellas (voiced here by Maz, both his and all those dreaming factory girls' wish fulfilment ) to the Beatle ball. And about All You Need Is The one You Make: The Fabs 'at the height of their comeback' and peak of their art. "All You Need Is Love" was a Lennon song, and said to be the last magnificent high tide mark of his big hit Beatle writing career too. It tended to be rock masterpiece B sides and album tracks for him after this; the unique Beatle knack of being both kooky and mainstream at once largely passing to Paul ('Hello Goodbye''Hey Jude'; 'Get Back' and 'Lady Madonna' to John's 'The Walrus' and 'Revolution' and 'Don't Let Me Down' George's 'The Inner Light. The late Beatle John 'B sides' are surely as good if not better songs ('The Walrus') than the hit A side ('Hello Goodbye'!) but the point is that 'All You Need Is Love' was also the huge and obvious hit. However competitive Paul was ("They weren't collaborators" said George Martin "but competitors") he was generous enough to recognise that John had written the better zeitgeist for the BBC satellite broadcast of England's choice for the One World project than 'Your Mother Should Know' his own typically charming but much slighter effort . George also paid homage to this ultimate hippy hit 'All You Need Is Love'. Indeed, he spent most of his subsequent solo career writing and singing his own versions of its message, including an open homage to it on 'All Those Years Ago" and a genuine contender to match it with 'All Things Must Pass'. If Paul followed his usual mutual practice of competing with John, he certainly didn't manage to match 'All You Need Is Love's' singalong mix of heavy gravity, anthemic cogency and sheer uplift with that Winged wonder 'Silly Love Songs' but he may have done with the Beatle album track 'The End' - not a hit single but a worthy and self-conscious valediction to the Beatle career and, as the climax of 'Abbey Road,' a different kind of hit probably played as much as most Sixties singles.'The End' is a beautifully constructed epitaph - or devout eulogy - to the same steadfast Beatle hippy faith. MY NEW NOVEL, SERGEANT SPECTRE'S LONELY RUBBER SOUL, IT WAS S IXTY YEARSAGO TODAY, SET IN THE BEATLES SIXTIES, WHICH TELLS THE WHOLE RAGS TO RICHES REAL-LIFE FAIRYTALE (COMPLETE WITH SHE'S LEAVING HOME GENERATION GAP AND SPIRITUAL REAWAKENING) IS PUBLISHED ONLINE HERE https://www.blogger.com/blog/page/edi... ON DECEMBER 4 2025, THE SIXTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE RELEASE OF RUBBER SOUL AND "DAY TRIPPER. WE CAN WORK IT OUT" (THE THIRD CHRISTMAS NUMBER ONE BEATLES SINGLE IN A ROW)