So here it is, Merry Christmas

The Retune Blog - 15th December 2023

How do you follow a song like Wizzard last week, well with Slade of course. Put on those dancing shoes and get yourself up and dancing and singing to Slade’s Merry XMas Everybody. The song itself even tells us so:

Does your granny always tell ya. That the old songs are the best? Then she's up and rock 'n' rolling with the rest.

Now ain’t that true. If I only had a pound for every time someone told me the old days were better, I’d certainly be a few quid richer at least! It’s not to say that reminiscing doesn’t have its place. It’s just that things weren’t always better in the past, and, well, even if they were we only have one place to which we can move:

Look to the future now, It's only just begun.

However we feel about the past, time marches forward and we really have little option other than to look to the future. The past has been, the future is yet to come, but the present is here right now. This leads to the final time warp lyric of this song:

So here it is, Merry Christmas. Everybody's having fun.

Whilst we look forward to the future, we can only do this from the present. So what does all this tell us about our relationship with time and its impact on our ability to live life well?

Our perspective on our past experiences, and how we respond to that perspective will inform our experience of the present. Looking to the future, and knowing that we can influence it, can help to provide us with hope and motivation for the future. But the space in which these two worlds collide, the present, is the place in which we can really have some fun.

So taking a leaf from the book of Slade, let’s choose to enjoy ourselves this Christmas focusing on all the choices we have and can make through which enjoyment becomes a reality in the here and now.