we'll have to muddle through

The thing that makes this song so heartbreaking, so unendingly melancholy, is that she knows - Judy knows - that she's lying. "Next year all our troubles will be miles away." Even as she's singing it, she understands that it's not true, can't be true. There will always be troubles. But there's something about Christmas that you cling to with this maddening hope, the possibility that bringing a tree into your tiny apartment and stringing it with the lights over which you had to fight with Jerry at the hardware store down the street and delicate glass ornaments you bought with your best friends at the flea market will correct something, or create something, a balm over all that went wrong, is still going wrong. I play this song and sit on the floor beside Fred and cry because I am so happy and sad all at once, just like Judy, alive with the immensity of knowing that no amount of tinsel and handholding and long tables set with the good dishes can solve everything, but also that it can solve - or soothe - something, and that can be enough. It has to be enough.