Neil Diamond's "Christmas Prayer" addresses feelings of loss around the holidays
In 2016, legendary musician and Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame singer/songwriter Neil Diamond released a Christmas album. And it has quickly become standard fare for the holiday season.
A fan favorite off of Diamond’s Acoustic Christmas is a sad but sweet tune called “Christmas Prayers,” which he wrote for his wife and manager Katie Diamond.
Katie had been feeling the loss of her grandmother, reflecting on Christmas’ past, and trying to grapple with the fact that those times are long gone and will never come again. It’s a common feeling around the holidays when we look back on our best memories and remember those who aren’t around to share them anymore. As most people know, Christmas isn’t all happy and jolly all of the time.
Diamond told Billboard:
“It came out of my wife Katie’s heart and mind, she was feeling blue about the loss 20 years ago of her grandmother, and it all came up about two Christmases ago. And she asked, or maybe I volunteered, to try and write something that would make her feel a little bit better.”
Once Diamond penned the song he decided he liked it enough to record it next time he was in the studio with a group of musicians – and once he did, the music just kept flowing until they had a whole Christmas album on their hands.
“It really caught their imagination and before we knew it they were playing and I was singing and it was becoming a wonderful record. So we just continued on that road and in a relative short period we had 10 or 12 tracks, Christmas tracks, and they were all acoustic because that was the setup that we had in the studio then.”
So, it turns out Acoustic Christmas happened by accident and all thanks to the song “Christmas Prayers.”
Feedback on the song has been overwhelmingly positive since so many people get tired or depressed by the constant cheeriness of Christmas music when the holiday can trigger plenty of negative emotions.
Instead of feeling guilty for not being “in the Christmas spirit,” the song allows people to accept and own their feelings of loss.
Diamond said:
“We’ve gotten a lot of feedback on this particular song and how it touches so many people online and the feeling of loss at Christmas, which is always portrayed as a jovial, joyous holiday, which it is. But there is, underneath that veneer a sense of sadness and I think this song touches that place and it is what I had hoped it would be. It feels right for that, it’s very atypical of any kind of Christmas song that I conceived writing.”
Calling it a “very warm and intimate” song, even though it’s based to some extent on sadness, Diamond said he’s glad he recorded it and launched a Christmas album to carry him into 2017. That happened to be his 50th anniversary as a recording artist! He released his first hit single, “Solitary Man,” in 1966.
Diamond celebrated his career by undertaking a massive tour at the age of 75. Unfortunately, he had to cut it short in 2018 after he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. That same year, the Recording Academy honored him with its Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys.
Be sure to scroll down below to hear “Christmas Prayers” and see the touching video.
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