Sometime Every Christmas

Michael W. Smith's “Sometime Every Christmas” is a reflective holiday song about memory and loneliness. The singer thinks about the holiday and the sands of time, years passing like the pages of old family photos in his mind, with faces and places and how Decembers used to be. A little loneliness and longing rises in him.

The chorus says that sometime every Christmas, he cannot say where or when or why, a moment or memory takes him by surprise, something in the season wells up in his eye, and he cries. The verses list triggers: a children's choir singing “Silent Night,” driving through his hometown to see Main Street dressed in lights, an old video where he hears his granddad's prayer, and his mother's living room with his father's empty chair. The turn comes when he reads Luke chapter two and remembers how God came to pursue a world in need, someone like him. The song does not hurry past grief, and it gives permission to feel sad in a season that expects joy. Smith writes it at a gentle pace with piano and strings. Many listeners who have lost a parent or grandparent find that it names what they feel but cannot say. It suits a Christmas concert, a service of remembrance or a quiet evening during Advent.

The trip to Bethlehem is Luke 2:4-7. The Son of Man seeking the lost is Luke 19:10, and joy coming in the morning is Psalm 30:5.