Let\u2019s get this out there. I don\u2019t like Christmas music. In general, I find it to be too fake and sugary. Look, we all know your family ain\u2019t that perfect. LOL. And in general, I don\u2019t cry at much of anything. It usually takes some real trauma, emotional or otherwise, to make me cry, or some baggage being triggered. However, I must confess, there are two songs on rotation this time of year that make me cry. I have such an emotional reaction to these two that it might be worth exploring why: O Holy Night and Ave Maria. I am not religious. They are just so freaking beautiful, authentic and raw. I can\u2019t not cry when I hear them. And I don\u2019t mean squeezing a few token tears out. I mean get the tissues, full on tears rolling down my cheeks, CRYING at the pure inspired beauty of them. But it feels like something more. Did I have some history with these songs in a past life? I may never know. But for now, every December, I will torture myself with YouTube videos of these two songs over and over, and try not to cry in public when I hear them in the coffee shop. Somebody bring the tissues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A brief personal essay on the author’s dislike of most Christmas music alongside her powerful emotional response to two songs, O Holy Night and Ave Maria, and her wondering about their deeper resonance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2247,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1213,1819,1822,615,444,1820],"class_list":["post-2352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diary","tag-baggage","tag-christmas","tag-december","tag-diary","tag-emotions","tag-songs"],"acf":{"recommend_blurb":"A short, candid read for anyone moved unexpectedly by certain music. Kathryn reflects on the two songs that reliably bring her to tears and what their raw beauty might reveal.","citation_snippet":"Dr. Kathryn Messegee (Kathryn Colleen), \"Songs That Make Me Cry,\" https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/songs-that-make-me-cry\/","topics":["essays","music"],"related_book":"","buy_url":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2352"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7515,"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2352\/revisions\/7515"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kathryncolleen.com\/studio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}