Asong that’s fitting for a Christmas in the time of pandemic

I tend to like my Christmas songs a little on the melancholy side.

Not bleak, but wistful, conveying the way the relentless cultural push for seasonal cheer can stir up dormant undercurrents of sadness or longing.

In some cases, you feel that melancholy ache even with an ostensibly cheerful lyric, as with Vince Guaraldi’s “Christmas Time is Here” or Mel Tormé’s “The Christmas Song.”

For my money, the greatest, most enduring Christmas classic is one that best utilizes melody and lyrics to meld regret with hope: a belief that optimism, even in the face of anguish, can carry us to better days.

That song, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” dares to acknowledge the disappointments of the present while wishing that by the next Christmas, “all our troubles will be miles away.”

Written by Hugh Martin for the 1944 film “Meet Me in St. Louis,” the song was performed by Judy Garland as an expression of encouragement to her character’s younger sister at a time when their father’s work was forcing the family to leave their home for New York.

“Someday soon, we all will be together, if the fates allow,” Garland sang. “Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow.”

Along with “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and “White Christmas,” “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” resonated with U.S. troops serving in World War II, because they understood all too well the concept of trying to “muddle through” hardship until they could reconnect with their loved ones.

This year, more than any other in my lifetime, that wistful vision of Christmas seems to speak to the moment we’re in.

More than 320,000 Americans have lost their lives to the pandemic. In homes across the country, family members are feeling the pain of that loss this week.

Countless others are struggling to recover from the debilitating physical effects of the virus.

Business owners and employees devastated by the pandemic are trying to hang on. People are waiting in long lines at food banks so they can feed their families.

Musicians and artists and all the members of the gig economy that give our communities their cultural vibrancy wonder when they’ll be able to connect with audiences again.

We’ve endured a lot as a nation over the past two decades — from the shock of 9/11 to the slow drip of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to the 2008 financial meltdown to the political rancor that has sent so many of us fleeing to our own comfortable silos of confirmation bias.

Nothing, however, prepared us for this year. Nothing could have equipped us to handle a menace that would overwhelm our hospitals, drive our unemployment rate from 3.5 percent to 14.7 percent in the span of two months, force many of our children to go to school via laptop and cause us to live in a state of perpetual semi-quarantine.

Nothing prepared us for holidays in which millions of Americans will have to keep their distance from beloved family members. This year, it’s easy — too easy — to understand what “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” or “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” were getting across.

We’re not soldiers engaged in a global conflict. But, then again, maybe we are. Our fight doesn’t have the drama of those who courageously put their lives on the line during World War II, but it has similarly demanded dedication, commitment, resilience, sacrifice and an ability to cope with the mind-warping rigors of monotony.

In 10 months, more Americans have been killed by the coronavirus than were killed in combat during World War II (although the percentage of the U.S. population killed in battle during the war, 0.2 percent, was considerably higher than the 0.1 percent lost to COVID-19).

The greatest Christmas songs of the World War II era reflected on happier times and offered a glimmer of possibility for the future.

With this month’s roll-out of COVID-19 vaccines, we can similarly feel the promise of better days.

As we grapple with the sadness of our long, long year and wish for a better 2021, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” speaks to both the pain and the hope.

Some people prefer undiluted joy from their yuletide favorites. Frank Sinatra, when he decided to cover Martin’s Christmas classic in 1957, asked the songwriter if he could “jolly it up a little bit.”

Martin complied by changing the “muddle through somehow” line to “hang a shining star upon the highest bough.” But Martin always preferred the original version.

For many of us, this year’s Christmas will mean finding a way to muddle through somehow. Here’s hoping, just as Martin hoped 76 years ago, that soon our troubles will be miles away.