Do You Hear What I Hear?

12.2025

Photo by Daniel Olah

Another Cyber Monday has come.

Emerging from the darkness, from the great beyond, it hurtles toward the earth and lands in the form of notifications, emails and text messages.

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The bombardment of offers requires me to spend a great number of minutes bulk deleting messages from my device. I’m wondering what box I did not uncheck recently that has resulted in all these emails. The bright side to this Monday morning situation is that I won’t have time to read the news which is a different kind of bombardment altogether.

Being a Monday, I’ll need to drive to the office. Once there I turn on every available light, which makes a difference but not quite enough of a difference. It’s only 9 AM but I can sense it’s going to be one of those days that remains stuck in an endless state of dawn’s early light.

By 10:30 AM I’m starving. All that sitting on the sofa watching movies over the long Thanksgiving weekend has made me endlessly hungry. Luckily, the local grocery store is a three minute walk from my office.

At the entrance, I make a concerted effort to ignore the seasonal merchandise. I think: If I don’t lay eyes on the green and red bows, the ribbons and gift boxes, then I won’t have to admit to myself that I’m hosting Christmas in a mere 19 days.

I quicken my step, pass the checkout stands and head to the back of the where the fruits and vegetables live.

Along the way I hear music. Unmistakable notes of Christmas vibes swirling around the ceiling. Cumulonimbus sounds: puffy, but with an inner more threatening layer, poised and ready to drench me in waves of clamoring bells, brassy tambourines. I stop for a moment, then go on. I can handle this. Years ago, I built up a tolerance for this very thing.

With my hand cart full, I head to the checkout stand. The familiar young woman expertly scans what I’ve managed to hunt and gather for today’s lunch: pre-washed arugula, asleep in its plastic coffin, a tub of cottage cheese, deli-prepared roasted tomatoes, and a bag of walnuts from the bulk foods section.

“Do you know the number for these?” she asks as she holds up the walnuts.

“747,” I say.

I never forget the walnut’s bin # because 747 happens to be same number as the best Boeing plane ever built. Arguably, the best airplane ever built by any company: The Queen of the Skies.

She punches in the number, and then reveals the total. A piece of plastic is tapped on a screen followed by a beep, which means I’m good to go. I get to eat today. As my receipt bursts out of its little tank, I ask her, “How are you holding up with the Christmas music?”

This is my first time out in public since Thanksgiving, but I know how this goes. The Holiday Music Soundtrack is turned on the day after Thanksgiving and stays on its infinite loop until closing time on December 31st.

She smiles. I’ve chatted with her dozens of times, but I’ve never seen her smile.

“You know, I was just wondering: When am I going to get sick of this?”

“Couple more days,” I said.

She laughs.

“I worked at a bookstore during Christmas for six years,” I tell her. “That was a long time ago, but I still can’t listen to The Nutcracker.”

---

A week goes by and I realize I won’t be able to ignore Christmas music altogether this year. The family gathering will need a background soundtrack in case we run out of things to say to each other. I add “Christmas playlist” to my Hosting To-Do list. Then forget about it for another week.

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Saturday night.

I pour myself a glass of red wine and sit down in my favorite swivel chair. Phone in hand, I set out to create a holiday playlist. I think about where to begin. There are the must-haves: Andy Williams, Vince Guaraldi, Bing Crosby, Eartha Kitt, Elvis. I leave Tchaikovsky on the injured reserve list. Maybe he’ll recover. Maybe I’ll recover. But for now, he’s off the team.

I get acquainted with a pre-fabricated playlist meant for just this purpose. While scrolling through the titles I rediscover Whitney Houston’s version of Do You Hear What I Hear from the 1987 compilation album “A Very Special Christmas.” How had I forgotten about it? It’s a fantastic rendition of a classic, and as she did with The Star Spangled Banner, Houston finds new ways to open up the sonic dynamics of an otherwise fairly straight-laced tune.

I listen to the track twice. On second listen, I come to the conclusion that the only thing wrong with Houston’s version is that she leaves out the first verse. As everybody knows, the night wind was the first to pass on the news about The Child. Cutting out the first verse not only removes an integral part of the story—that the natural world has intel to pass on—it also cuts short one of the best songs on the album.

I pause adding more songs to the playlist in order to research whether a more complete version of Houston’s Do You Hear What I Hear exists. As happens to many good Saturday nights spent alone with a connected device and no invitation to respond to, I end up falling deep down the pit of alluring search result suggestions. There might be only 12 days of Christmas, but there’s an endless number of hours of YouTube content.

While wandering in the pit of results, I wonder if there’s an equally compelling version of Do You Hear What I Hear that I’ve not heard before. I check out Robert Goulet’s. I take no issue with it, but it’s not what I’m after. I skip Josh Groban while asking myself: is that the guy with a really decent voice, or am I confusing him with Michael Bublé? I get the two mixed up. Carrie Underwood’s take is very good, especially the country-spiced guitar fills that flirt lightly with the blues as good country music must inevitably do. Bing Crosby does his Bing Thing, which is much better than most, but I plan to save his playlist slot for White Christmas which is nothing short of sentimental perfection.

I stumble upon a Pentatonix offer which does a remix version centering on Houston’s, but with a gossamer-like harmonic overlay. It’s got legs and punch, but it’s not a contender to top her original version.

By now it’s 12:45 AM and my playlist is tragically thin. I’m so tired I go back to Josh Groban and notice his version features a group called ‘The War and the Treaty’ which I’ve never heard of.

And this is when the night wind tells me something I did not know. For not only does their version include all the verses, but from a musical stand-point it’s the most satisfying version I’ve come across. It’s a little bit gospel, a little bit country. It’s a bluesy, wonderfully arranged interpretation of a song that at its heart hopes for a way forward at at time when it felt like there might not be any future to hope for.

Composed in October 1962 by husband and wife Noel Regney and Gloria Shayne, Do You Hear What I Hear was, in part, a response to the frightening realities of the Cuban missile crisis. While the literal story recounts the bible’s version of the birth of Christ it is also a song that pleads for the end of violence. That the Groban/War & Treaty version conveys the urgency of that plea while still imbuing the music with a little bit of feel-good funkiness is not contradictory.

There is no way to hope for the end of violence without maintaining a capacity to feel the power of joy.

By 1:15 AM, I had only six songs on my playlist, but for once, all that time spent looking for something on my device felt worthwhile.

Here’s to a new season filled with kindness, inspiring discoveries and kick-ass playlists.

Thank you for reading.

{| AC

For those of you who have been with me this last year, first of all Thank You! And if you were wondering, I did keep the Peace on Earth ornament up on the mantle all year. Now accompanied by Jupiter.

All that space, all that possibility. If anyone knows where I might find a decent Pluto ornament, please DM me.