"This Christmas" by Donny Hathaway

Christmas standards like "White Christmas" often balance the joy of the season with some melancholy. Donny Hathaway's modern standard of "This Christmas" celebrates the simple pleasures of the season, but the complexities of real life give a tinge of sorrow that presses us to enjoy those joys to the full.

You can hear "This Christmas" and more songs by Donny Hathaway in a playlist here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5msQTtkOwzRvTt5NoYk5Ao?si=0146d497298b49f1

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
Hello, and welcome to the bestsong ever this week. Short deep dive
into a song and what makes itspecial? The best song ever this week
this week is This Christmas by DonnieHathaway. I'm Scott Frampton. My Christmas

(00:28):
wish is that we could share thissong with you here and now, but
Santas and in charge of music rights. Please head to the show notes,
where there's a link to a playlistwith This Christmas and other songs by Donnie
Hathaway. So let's begin Nostalgia's memorywith the pain removed, wrote beloved San
Francisco Chronicle calumnist RB Kane. Christmaspop songs are often so bound up in

(00:54):
holiday tropes that they sound nostalgic evenfor the current moment. This candy striped
sugar rush of holiday cheer. However, miss is that many of the classic
Christmas songs are actually quite bittersweet.Have yourself a merry little Christmas, most
famously echoes with next year, allour troubles will be out of sight.

(01:15):
But there's also I'll be home forChristmas, if only in my dreams.
And even in White Christmas, there'san undercurrent of melancholy that makes the memory
of just like the ones I usedto know ache with longing from the warries
of wartime America to the fragile beautyof a Savior appearing in a stable as
a baby wrapped in swaddling. Relieffrom our struggles is what makes the joy

(01:40):
of the season incandescent. That's thestandard for a Christmas standard. White Christmas
was written by Irving Berlin, aprose pro Nadine mckinner wrote this Christmas while
working as a holiday temp in aChicago post office. There she saw holiday
cards and magazines go by as shehummed along with the Christmas songs on the

(02:02):
radio. This quote, overdose ofChristmas joy, as she put it,
led her to write some lyrics ina spiral notebook as an answer to one
of her favorites, Nat King Cole'sversion of the Christmas Song. Later,
her boyfriend was doing some interior designwork for Donnie Hathaway, who sung the
Ghetto, was currently on the radio, and he arranged for her to sing

(02:24):
the Rising R and B Star,a few of her songs. She says
that after she sang this Christmas,Hathaway said, wait a minute, sing
that again. She ripped that pageout of her notebook and handed it to
him and I never got it back, she said. Hathaway took mckinnor's words
and ran with them. Hathaway haddropped out of Howard, where he studied

(02:49):
music in a Fine Arts scholarship,to move to Chicago for a job working
at Curtis Mayfield's kirk Tom label asa writer, producer, ranger, and
session musician. Hathaway was born inChicago, raised in Saint Louis by his
grandmother, where he began singing gospelas a child under the name Donnie Pitts.
It was while working at Kirtom,where he participated in sessions from Mayfield,

(03:09):
The Impressions, The Staple Singers,and Aretha Franklin, that he was
spotted by King Curtis and signed toAtlantic Records sub label at CO. His
debut, Everything Is Everything, onwhich he co produced and wrote five of
the nine songs, was released onJuly first, nineteen seventy. Esteemed producer
Joel Dorn, who produced nineteen seventytwo million selling duet's album ROBERTA. Flack

(03:32):
and Donnie Hathaway, said Hathaway's debutwas his best then. It had a
certain innocence to it. Afterwards hewas a genius, but right then he
was just another guy trying. ThisChristmas, as performed, arranged, and
co produced by Hathaway is a songabout a guy trying. The single was

(03:54):
released in nineteen seventy, a fewmonths after his debut album and He gives
it a mis tempo groove not thatfar off from the ghetto. Sleigh bells
played by co producer Rick Powell,Hathaway's Howard classmate, that the holiday feel.
Low brass and lush strings wrap itup in romance, like garland around
a tree. As romantic songs go, However, its goals are modest.

(04:18):
Hang all the missiletoe. He sings, I'm going to get to know you
better. The song's small scale,grounding it in the every day is part
of what makes it special. Itisn't about epic love or a holiday that's
one for the ages. It's justabout this Christmas. The idea is driven

(04:40):
home by Hathaway's phrasings, through thechoruses, which give equal emphasis to each
syllable, and the lyric that formsthe song's title. The romance couldn't be
more gentle. It's having fun andgetting to know someone better, better and
striving for it is what underpins thewhole song. The holidays aren't instant joy.

(05:02):
They can be a struggle. Youfeel in Hathaway's brovore a vocal performance
in the lyric, this Christmas willbe a very special Christmas for me.
Striving toward a better holiday could beindicative of many things. The struggle to
fully enjoy a Christmas bordered by theshadow of those who are no longer with

(05:23):
us, for example. It's clear, however, that Hathway wanted to create
a Christmas standard that was capital Bblack. He knew what he wanted to
do musically and the impact he wantedto make with this song. Rick pal
said the song has been further madea standard reversions by R and B luminaries
like Aretha and Patti LaBelle in TheTemptations, but it's also been more recently

(05:46):
covered by artists like Christina Aguilera,English singer, Jess Glynn and The Lady
formerly known as Antebellum. As witheverything that we create in this culture,
it starts with us, and thenwhen it's great, it resonates outside our
community. It becomes part of thefabric of America. Donny Hathaway's daughter Lala
Hathways said herself a Grammy winner.I think my father would be tickled.

(06:15):
Poet Carl Sandberg said of World Wartwo era America and White Christmas, we
have learned to be a little sadand a little lonesome without being sickly about
it. This feeling is caught inthe song of a thousand juke boxes and
the tune whistled in streets and homes. When we sing that we don't hate
anybody, weigh down under. IrvingBerlin catches us where we love peace.

(06:39):
Similarly, the modern standard of ThisChristmas, written during a different war and
for a different America, ends withthe plea to quote, shake a hand,
shake a hand, Wish your brotherMary Christmas all over the land,
peace on earth, and good willtoward men. Indeed, nostalgia is actually

(07:05):
a Greek compound word, combining thewords for homecoming with ache. Irving Berlin
denied any deeper meanings to his songlyrics, but one wonders if the subtle
sorrow in White Christmas was more thana Hollywood songwriter being homesick for New York.
Berlin's three week old son had diedof crib death on Christmas morning in

(07:26):
nineteen twenty eight. Likewise, reallife has added poignancy to this Christmas.
Donnie Hathaway was diagnosed with paranoid schizophreniaand given a pill regimen of dozens a
day. Madsy sometimes went off afterparanoid delusions. Boarded a studio session for
a new solo album. In nineteenseventy nine, Hathaway fell from a hotel

(07:48):
window in an apparent suicide. Thejoy in this Christmas so evident in the
brilliant humanity of his voice, isanother fragile beauty so brightly each Christmas.
It's a reminder to try to makethe holiday the one right now special,

(08:11):
a triumph over our struggles, becausesometimes the struggles win. Thanks for listening.
I'm a man with a lot offavorite Christmas songs. I've made dozens
of Christmas music mixes for hundreds ofpeople, but this Christmas is singular,

(08:35):
and I always appreciate the gift ofgentle tears that Donnie Hathaway gives me each
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