December Will Be Magic Again

 Urgh! Another unfinished one! I'm sorry! But I'm moving, exhausted, and Patreon is going down tonight so I have to get this one in early if y'all still want a sneak peek. Apologies.

BBC Showtime Special
Xmas Special
December Will Be Magic Again (single)

With “December Will Be Magic Again,” we’re in considerably less seriously territory. As a one-off Christmas single with no attachment to an album, it dallies in its own winter wonderland, willfully free of responsibility to Kate Bush’s contemporary work. When singers do Christmas songs, they’re willfully partaking in a tradition of cheerful odes to Yuletide (with some notable exceptions). “December Will Be Magic Again” is one of these songs, abdicating its status as a contemporary of Never for Ever in favor of filling the Christmas single slot. Yet Bush couldn’t station even her Christmastime fluff in drab tradition, and proceeded to fuck around with it.

Unusually for Bush but par for the course in Christmas music, “December” is latently nostalgic. From the “again” in its title to its dwelling on childhood images, the song goes to great lengths to reconstruct childhood memories of Christmas. Bush comfortably settles into the “adolescent” part of her vocal range, singing lots of high notes with a wonder usually only prepubescents can manage. Bush has exactly the sort of voice which makes lyrics like “take a husky to the ice/while Bing Crosby sings “White Christmas”/he makes you feel nice” sound not less patently goofy, but at least more intuitive.  

The song is embellished with twinkles of Bush’s childhood as she writes what’s clearly an exercise in rebuilding her childhood. Bush has a refreshing tendency to lean on her own interests in her songwriting, which liberates “December” from feeling too commercial. There are the obvious references to staples of Christmastime like Santa Claus (tell me he’s called “Father Christmas” and I’ll break your legs) and kissing under the mistletoe, but they’re balanced by moments like, say, Oscar Wilde showing up: “light the candle lights/to conjure Mr. Wilde/ooh, it’s quiet inside/here in Oscar’s mind.” It’s a bit like having, say, Wham! sing about George Bernard Shaw. The reference is clunky, with two uses of “light” in a single clause accompanied by some strange stuff about dwelling in the head of Oscar Wilde. Yet it’s an oddly poignant choice of creative minds to dive into: Wilde’s idiosyncratic wit often responded to darkness in his personal life. As a queer man in Victorian England, being a noticeably brilliant individual was diminished by being pegged as subhuman for your sexual orientation. True recognition comes later when millions of people read your work, including a little The Happy Prince fan called Catherine Bush.