My two-year-old daughter is becoming a prolific song-writer, churning out original material on a near-daily basis. My favorite composition of hers (so far) is “Super Kitty,” but a close second is her very recent work, “In the Darkness.” It’s to be sung in a major key, joyfully. The lyrics are as follows:
In the darkness
In the darkness
My darkness
And your darkness
Yay!
“In the Darkness” is, to my mind, a Christmas song, and a masterful one at that. Like all great Christmas songs, it sentimentalizes nothing. The world is indeed a dark place: greed, power politics and tribalism together go a really long way to explaining the twists and turns of human history. Cynicism works pretty well here, and the Herods of the world generally figure out a way to rise to the top.