This Christmas

I’ve been thinking a lot this holiday season about the interplay between the phrases “Last Christmas” and “This Christmas.” When you hear those phrases, you may immediately think of the familiar songs that share their names. Music has a way of doing that—of attaching memory and emotion to a phrase before we even realize it.

If, like me, you spent your formative musical years in the 1980s and 1990s, hearing “Last Christmas” likely summons Wham’s now-iconic holiday hit. It still finds its way onto playlists decades later. In fact, if you’re feeling ambitious, or nostalgic, or both, there’s a Spotify playlist called “Last Christmas Covers” featuring more than forty-five versions of the song. Same lyrics. Same melody. Forty-five different interpretations.

Despite its festive reputation and melody, Last Christmas is not really a joyous Christmas song at all. It’s a song about heartbreak that happens to take place during the holidays. Written by George Michael, it tells the story of a love that didn’t last, of a heart given away and not returned, of the awkward pain of seeing someone who once meant everything and now means something else entirely. The music is upbeat; the lyrics are not. It’s cheerful sorrow. Seasonal grief wrapped in tinsel.

By contrast, Donny Hathaway’s This Christmas is a song rooted firmly in the present. It’s about warmth, closeness, and the deliberate act of creating something meaningful right now. Mistletoe, trimming the tree, learning someone’s heart in the glow of shared moments. Inspired by Nadine McKinnor’s childhood memories and her desire for a soulful Christmas song that spoke to Black America, This Christmas isn’t about what was lost or what might have been, it’s about what is.

I think that contrast matters.

Last Christmas looks backward.
This Christmas asks us to pay attention to the present moment.

And that’s where these phrases stop being song titles and start becoming mirrors.

For some of us, this Christmas will be the first one with a new partner—full of tentative joy, unfamiliar traditions, and the quiet hope that something good is taking root.

For others of us, this Christmas will be the first one without a lifelong partner—their chair empty, their absence louder than any carol.

For some of us, this Christmas means going home to familiar faces, settings, and well-worn traditions.

For others, this Christmas is the moment we realize there is no longer a home to go home to, at least not in the way there once was.

For some of us, this Christmas will be marked by the wonder of a new baby, the kind of joy that feels impossibly fragile and fierce all at once.

For others, this Christmas is another reminder of a child who is not here, whose absence never becomes ordinary, no matter how many holidays pass.

For some, this Christmas brings reunion: a loved one returning after a long absence.

For others, this Christmas is spent waiting, not for someone to come home, but for the moment they will go home to their heavenly one.

What makes all of this so tender is the simple truth we rarely say out loud:
Every This Christmas has the potential to become a Last Christmas.

And we often don’t know which one is which while we’re living it.

That knowledge doesn’t have to steal joy, but it should sharpen it. It invites us to hold This Christmas with care. To be present. To notice. To love more deliberately. To grieve honestly when we must, and to celebrate fully when we can.

Because whether this Christmas feels like Donny Hathaway or George Michael, whether it’s filled with warmth or loss, or some complicated mixture of both, it is still This Christmas.

And This Christmas matters.