Legal Commentary

A Merry Christmas

By Kenneth Anderson

I would like to take the opportunity to wish our readers and all our community a Merry Christmas, and a happy New Year.

But at least we all will be together, if the Fates allow,
From now on we?ll have to muddle through somehow.
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

This, from the Judy Garland version of ?Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,? a wistful and bittersweet song from 1944?s Meet Me in St. Louis; it was a big hit with the GIs overseas in the war.  Later in the 1950s, Frank Sinatra recorded it with a more upbeat lyric, changing ?muddle through somehow? to ?hang a shining star upon the highest bough.?  That was the cheerful 1950s, but muddling through seemed about right in 1943?44.

(Side note:  I listened to the Bob Dylan Christmas album and, to my immense surprise, rather liked it.  Enough to buy it on Itunes.  Though it is true, as Althouse says, that Dylan manages to make ?I?ll Be Home for Christmas? into not so much a promise as a threat.)

In related news, I would like to note that the NORAD Santa tracking station got it right and ... Santa came!

Full post as published by The Volokh Conspiracy on December 25, 2009 (boomark / email).