By Vincent L. Hall
Stevie Wonder did something 55 years ago that most 17-year-olds then and now would find impressive. He released his first Christmas album. His title song is one that you will find as relevant and radical today as the day it first surfaced.
My Christmas playlist begins with “Someday at Christmas.” First, because of its socially “WOKE” message. Second, it never mentions the commercialized trappings we tether to the birth of Jesus. This song captures the “Reason for the Season” and the peace and love Jesus was sent to model for us.
It would do well for us to note that the song was written and released amidst the scourge of the Vietnam War. A war so politically and socially bereft of justice that just talking about it too loudly could get you killed. Dr. Martin Luther King talked about it a lot in 1967. As a result, he never lived to sing “Someday at Christmas” in 1968.
Check out the heaviness of these lyrics.
Someday at Christmas, men won’t be boys
Playing with bombs like kids play with toys
One warm December, our hearts will see
A world where men are free
Someday at Christmas, there’ll be no wars
When we have learned what Christmas is for
When we have found what life’s really worth
There’ll be peace on earth.
That was 5-1/2 decades years ago, and men are still acting like boys. Grown boys are buying and brandishing weapons that kill innocent people from Ukraine to the University of Virginia. Hadis Najafi, a young Iranian woman, tied her unscarved hair back and was shot to death in broad daylight.
Stevie is right. We don’t know what life is worth; therefore, there is no peace on earth.
Someday at Christmas, we’ll see a land
With no hungry children, no empty hand
One happy morning people will share
Our world, where people care
Whoa, someday at Christmas, there’ll be no tears
When all men are equal, and no man has fears
One shining moment, one prayer away
From our world today
Well, we see a land, but there are still plenty of hungry children and empty hands. Dallas is the capital of glitter in America, but Dallas Public Schools have to offer daily food stipends over holiday breaks and summers. Church parking lots throughout urban American cities have become makeshift grocery stores and food giveaway spots.
This statement may sound harsh, but I’m glad Stevie can’t see all our countrymen and women languishing under bridges and overpasses. He can’t physically see the overnight campgrounds in brush harbors and fields. Meanwhile, mayors appoint “Homeless Czars” and use the houseless and destitute as political pawns.
But don’t just get mad at your so-called leaders. There are no shortages of high-minded selfish bastards in this city who say they want a solution. Just as long as it’s nowhere near where they live. From Highland Park to Highland Hills, the refrain is the same. “Don’t put them, folks, over here by us!”
Someday at Christmas, man will not fail
Hate will be gone, and love will prevail
Someday a new world that we can start
With hope in every heart, yeah
Man is failing this Christmas again. Love is gone, and hate prevails. America seems to hate Blacks, “Messicans,” Jews, Gays, and them damn Asians too. African Americans and Africans don’t like each other. Jerusalem and Palestine are further from a “two-state solution” than they were 55 years ago when Stevie Wonder espoused this dream.
However, we must habitually hallucinate a happy ending—the way Stevie did.
Someday all our dreams will come to be
Someday in a world where men are free
Maybe not in time for you and me
But someday at Christmastime!
It’s good to know that this Someday at Christmas, Brittney Griner will be at home and not be a hostage. Twitter and billionaire racists like Elon Musk won’t have a say on this Christmas. It’s hard to conceive it and even harder to believe, but that’s all we have! Thank you, Stevie, for a teenaged dream that still lives on!
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