If you’re a fan of Christmas music, you’re probably OK that many of the songs you hear are going to be somewhat lightweight in nature. After all, you likely don’t tune into holiday tunes in the hopes of getting depressed.
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That doesn’t mean that there’s no place for Christmas songs with a little something more on their mind than trees and eggnog. Stevie Wonder‘s “Someday at Christmas” remains one of the most beloved holiday songs because of its willingness to address the societal ills the holiday cheer can’t hide.
Wonder Takes on the Holidays
All of 17 years old in 1967, Stevie Wonder was already a massively successful artist. He had delivered five Top-10 singles by that time, and was truly just coming into his own in determining what kind of artist he wanted to be going forward.
At that point, however, he was still very much beholden to the Motown machine for his career moves. Thus, he was asked to record a Christmas album for the 1967 holidays. As usual, Wonder sang and played keyboards, drums, and harmonica, while The Funk Brothers, Motown’s legendary session band, handled the rest of the instrumentation.
The album (Someday at Christmas) was recorded before Wonder had found his footing as a songwriter (as he would on his monumental albums in the ’70s). As a result, he mostly stuck with standards of the season such as “Silver Bells” and “The Little Drummer Boy” to pad out the running time.
In addition, some of Motown’s top writers offered a couple of songs that would become standards in their own right. There was the upbeat “What Christmas Means to Me.” And then there was the contemplative “Someday at Christmas,” written by Ron Miller and Bryan Wells, a pair that were responsible for several other early Wonder hits.
The Meaning of “Someday at Christmas”
What’s striking about “Someday at Christmas” is how it dared to take a clear-eyed look at the world as it was instead of through the rose-colored glasses of the holidays. It provided a template for all future songs of the season that wanted to address the times in forthright fashion.
Someday at Christmas men won’t be boys, Wonder begins. Playing with bombs like kids play with toys. Kudos to Miller and Wells for acknowledging the war-ravaged times, as well as to Motown and Wonder for consciously addressing those themes as well.
“Someday at Christmas” goes on to sympathize with the oppressed: Someday all our dreams will come to be / Someday in a world where men are free. The indigent are included as well: Someday at Christmas we’ll see a land / With no hungry children, no empty hand.
Finally, the notion of equal rights for all is brought to the table by Miller and Wells: When all men are equal and no man has fears / One shining moment, one prayer away / From our world today. But this is not a song that raises unrealistic hopes, as evidenced by the heartbreaking conclusion: Maybe not in time for you and me / But someday at Christmastime.
The musical structure, with repeated verses and no chorus, gives the effect of no resolution, as we chase something forever beyond our reach. Still, being conscientious enough to bring the bad stuff to light is the first step, and Stevie Wonder’s “Someday at Christmas” does that in moving fashion.
Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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