To be honest, it just hasn’t felt like Christmas to me this year. I’ve been super busy with work. The weather where I live, for the most part, has been more like summer. My son’s too old for my annual pilgrimage to the toy stores, and as I write this (a week or so before you’ll read it), my tree sits in my living room undecorated. It’s been a strange year.
Part of the reason, I know, is that Santa Claus ended for my son last year, and I think that also took some wonder and excitement out of things for me. So, in hopes of finding some holiday cheer, I turned to an old favorite, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and they delivered.
I’ve been a TSO fan since the release of Christmas Eve and Other Stories in 1996 and a Savatage fan for many years before that. I witnessed the spectacle that is the band’s live performances several times before I took my son for the first time. It was that concert, though, I was reminded of as I listened to “First Snow.”
I still remember the look on his face as the band began this song and the “snow” began to fall in the first few rows of the audience. I knew it was coming, having seen it a few times before, but he was completely unprepared and stared in wide-eyed wonder. I don’t believe that he’d ever seen real snow at that point, and he hopped around, trying to catch the “flakes” as they fell.
Then, of course, as the song went on and sped up, he was treated to a stunning laser show that dazzled him. For years after that concert, every time my son would hear that first big riff of the song, he’d get excited and yell “shiny song,” which is what he called it after that experience. To this day, he still likes the song, though I’m not sure he remembers why.
I relived that moment as the song played, remembering the look on his face and the pure joy that his wonder gave me.
Here’s hoping that you and yours have a happy holiday, no matter how you celebrate.
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