The Song
Growing up in Houston, Texas, Robert Earl Keen didn't often see snow at Christmas time. He says "I didn't even know what a chestnut looked like until I was 30 years old and saw it in a picture book… It was a different kind of Christmas. Every Christmas song I had ever heard didn't have a lot to do with growing up in Houston where it was most likely 85 degrees and 95 percent humidity."
"Merry Christmas from the Family" describes the Christmas gathering of a fairly dysfunctional Texas family whose merrymaking—which includes drinking alcohol, carving a turkey, watching a televised ball game and smoking cigarettes—seems to be punctuated with Christmas music and the need to run to convenience stores for additional supplies such as fake snow and cigarettes. Various family members and events are described throughout the verses. No one is sure how to react to a younger sister bringing her Mexican boyfriend to the party, but as soon as he sings "Feliz Navidad" he is welcomed into the fold. Brother Ken arrives with five children from two of his previous marriages. Ken's new wife, Kay, chain smokes and "talks all about AA." Extended family also appear. Fred and Rita—whose relationship to the narrator appears to have been forgotten—arrive from Harlingen in a motor home, which when plugged in, overloads the electrical system and knocks out the family's Christmas lights. The family then waits on the front lawn and joins together in singing "Silent Night" when cousin David flips the breaker that brings the lights back on.
Read more about this topic: Merry Christmas From The Family
Famous quotes containing the word song:
“In song and dance man expresses himself as a member of a higher community: he has forgotten how to walk and speak and is on the way toward flying up into the air, dancing.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus.”
—Bible: Hebrew Song of Solomon, 7:4.