Christmas Time With You

*
Click on the ‘Play’ button above to hear the song as you read the lyrics below.
If the player doesn’t start straight away, wait and then press the ‘Play’ button again, or alternatively, you can listen to Christmas Time With You on Soundcloud HERE.
*
Christmas Time With You with music composed & performed by Mitchigan’s Angela Predhomme & lyrics by me, Paul Robert Thomas and you can read about the meaning of the lyrics below.
*
Released by Angela Predhomme on her album Holidayolio available to download on iTunes HERE on Spotify HERE on Amazon HERE
*
Over the 2018, 2019 and 2020 Christmas holidays, the great Michigan singer/songwriter Angela Predhomme’s and my Christmas pop song Christmas Time With You opened the Hallmark Movie Channel’s Christmas film Christmas On Honeysuckle Lane starring Alicia Witt and Colin Ferguson that you can watch the trailer for HERE. You can watch the lyric video HERE. Apparently, millions of people watch the USA’s Hallmark’s Movie Channel and ‘Christmas on Honeysuckle Lane’ during the Christmas holiday period.
*
Watch Angela live on Fox 2 TV being interviewed & performing our song ‘Christmas Time With You‘ HERE and HERE.
*
You can read the new newspaper article on the song HERE and also the Music Industry Press Release HERE.
*
You can listen to Angela’s 6/12/18 Radio WHMI interview and live performance of Christmas Time With You HERE.
*
‘Yet another way of co-writing is the old school Rodgers and Hammerstein, Elton John and Bernie Taupin way — where one person writes lyrics and the other music. This was the method used to write “Christmas Time with You,” the song of mine that opens the Hallmark film “Christmas on Honeysuckle Lane.” For this song, I just did the music and production. The words came from lyricist Paul Robert Thomas, a collaborator across the pond in the UK. Again, flexibility is everything. I appreciated that Paul was OK with my modifying a few lines to fit the rhythmic meter of the music’ – Angela Predhomme, Associated Press Metro Magazine 12/2/21.
*
Christmas Time With You Lyrics
Look out your window baby where the snow is falling down
There’s a thick white blanket covering all of this town
Everyone is inside, they’re getting ready to eat
By the table, I keep one empty seat
For you’re not here, what can I do?
It’s another Christmas time without you

I wanna hold you so close and never ever let go
We’ll go walking and play around in the snow
We’ll watch the sun go down and then the moon appear
We’ll eat mince pies and drink red wine and beer
Then we’ll cuddle closer like we just love to do
Oh Baby, I wanna spend Christmas time with you

Christmas time with you
I want Christmas time with you

I ask Father Christmas now for just one little thing
It’s something only angels can bring
To see you walk on in here now through that creaky old door
I couldn’t want for anything more
It would stop me feeling sad hurting and blue
Oh Baby, I wanna spend Christmas time with you
Christmas time with you
I want Christmas time with you
My Christmas should be with you

Music composed & performed by Angela Predhomme
Song lyrics by Paul Robert Thomas

Christmas Time With You, meaning of the lyrics

So, you don’t just sit down and write lyrics, it’s not like going to work 9 – 5 and with me it usually starts with an image or a scene, in this case a Christmas card scene in my head. The scenes can come to you at any time and anywhere and can be sparked by something you’ve experienced or something someone says, a newspaper article or a story on the TV news etc.

I write lyrics with a rhythm in my head when writing and I can guess how the musical skeleton of the song will eventually sound because words obviously have their own rhythm and in this case I initially used the melody of the music of Dylan’s song ‘Man of Peace’ to write the lyrics to, in fact the first lines of both songs are the same, ‘Look out your window, baby………’, and although both songs deal with Christian concepts, (Dylan’s from Matthew 10;34) there the similarities end.

This scene starts with a woman living in a snow-covered wooden cabin that’s just outside of town, but she’s not woods-folk or a hillbilly. She can see the town that’s covered in a thick blanket of snow from the cabin window as the snow falls outside and, inside the cabin, she has guests waiting for the Christmas feast to be served.
This is one of my ‘straight’ sets of lyrics insomuch as there are no double-entendres introduced as I usually do use with other lyrics that I write, although in ‘Christmas Time With You’ one empty seat is purposefully kept at the festive table, in this case to remember her partner who fell while serving in Afghanistan and, despite her hopes, won’t be coming back and the empty chair also represents loss and sorrow. The empty chair at the table obviously amplifies him missing but also is reflective of a Christian Polish Christmas tradition to leave an empty chair at the table to represent our wiliness to take in an extra guest, alluding to Mary and Joseph finding there was no place for them, ‘No room in the Inn’ in which to give birth to baby Jesus, The Messiah-to-be. It is also a Jewish tradition of both leaving an empty chair and of pouring an extra cup of wine at Passover ready for The Messiah to return and drink it. On a more contemporary note, President Obama left an empty seat in his 2016 State of The Nation speech to symbolize all of the victims of gun violence who were gone and wouldn’t return.

As the story progresses, she starts to remember how they used to spend past Christmas’s together, hugging each other, playing around in the snow, watching the sun go down and eating mince pies and drinking red wine and beer together and she sings in the chorus that she wants her partner back to spend Christmas time with him/her, ‘I want Christmas time with you’.

She then asks Father Christmas for her present, it’s ‘Something only Angels can bring’ – to have her partner back home with her so that she would then stop ‘Feeling sad, hurting and blue’, she wants to spend Christmas time with him/her like they always used to and she only wants to spend it with him/her.

The song is dedicated to all those who have lost loved ones serving abroad while serving their country and are sadly missed, especially at Christmas time.

Paul Robert Thomas 22/11/18