The Tambourine Man's Christmas

You're inside the bar scene in the old film: "It's a Wonderful Life," that part where Jimmy Stewart is drinking himself into Christmas oblivion cause Uncle Charley lost the deposit money and Scrooge (Mr. Potter) is foreclosing on the family bank. Next stop for Jimmy...jumping off the bridge. Merry Christmas! Through the bar window, outside on the frozen snow bank - lit in a shadow of faded red neon is an old man...a wastrel...a fallen away choir-boy with the terminal shakes; the town drunk. The old man is singing "Adeste Fideles" from a tattered choir book. The bar goes silent; not a dry eye in the house. Every drunk in town remembers a Christmas past when Ma was still alive and it was all mulled wine, roast goose and hot mince pie. Then the old man sings: "Here Comes Santa Claus," and everybody cheers. Much slapping of backs and toasts to a new year. Maybe Jimmy won't jump off the bridge and Tiny Tim will be cured of polio. Maybe everything rotten in the world will turn to gold. Maybe there will TRULLY be Peace on Earth and Good Will Toward Men...if only for the few moments it takes to drink another holiday round. Now the old man is invited in for a pint of hot rum and they lift him up on a bar stool and he sings: "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire...." His voice is half-gone; his pitch is a little shaky; but his heart is true. He is the voice of Father Christmas. He is the shattered remnant of every besotted Uncle and third cousin who ever sang too soused and loud at Midnight mass...he is an outcast from a Dickens novel...and he's my father circa 1956. In reality that's Bob Dylan on his new Christmas album: "Christmas in the Heart." You can have your Sting and his poetic evocations of a Winter Solstice (whatever that is - means nothing to an American)...you can shove all your negative reviews concerning every wierd and exotic new curve Dylan has gone down in his incredible journey...you can boo like they used to do back in the sixties when he strapped on the Stratocaster...and go ahead a listen to the Norma Luboff Choir. This is Bob Dylan backed by what sounds like the Andrews sisters...it works as well as Egg Nog and 100 proof rum and those nay-sayers and Scrooges can laugh...but I dig it and the money goes to feed some homeless folk. True Christmas spirit...Heh, Mr. Tambourine Man...sing a song for me, I'm not sleepy and there ain't no place I'm going to......" On Dasher, On Dancer, on Prancer....