Today’s song is ‘Driving Home for Christmas’. This is a Christmas song written and composed by English singer-songwriter Chris Rea. It was originally released as one of two new songs on Rea's first compilation album ‘New Light Through Old Windows’ in October 1988, and issued as the fourth single from the album in December 1988, where it peaked at Number 53 in the ‘UK Singles Chart’ as part of The Christmas EP.
Despite its original modest chart placement, the song has made a reappearance in the top 40 every year since 2007 when it peaked at Number 33 and is featured among the Top 10 Christmas singles. It reached a new peak of Number 11 in 2018. In a UK-wide poll in December 2012, it was voted twelfth on the ITV Television special ‘The Nation’s Favourite Christmas Song’.
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This song has been a favourite of mine ever since I first heard it around 1990. In fact, there are a number of important indicators that tell me annually when Christmas Day draws closer. One sees an increase in the footfall at shopping centres as hundreds of people pass you armed with shopping bags, stuffed to the brim with presents for their friends and loved ones; some of which will never be used and others that will be returned and exchanged before the New Year Day sales start. The roads seem to get fuller with slow-moving traffic and despite it being a season of goodwill, more horns get honked by impatient motorists who curse the queue of ‘bad drivers’ they seem to be in.
I don’t know about you, but when you pull up alongside another car at the traffic lights, do you automatically look across at the other motorist and start a mad minute’s personal assessment based only on what your eyes see. It must be the writer’s imagination at play inside me, but I do. I usually begin to guess what they’re about this Christmas season. Are they headed for some secret rendezvous with their lover, and squeezing in seeing the person they’ve been having a clandestine affair with for the past two years, and who is pressing them to leave their spouse and family? Have they just been to the hospital and learned that they have just been diagnosed with malignant cancer, or are now cancer clear? Are they a mass murderer who has killed ten victims over the past twenty years and has remained undetected and is motoring to a quiet country spot where they can dump the body of their latest victim,m who lies dead in the boot of their car?
By the time the traffic lights change, I have usually concluded my summation. It will be invariably determined by the nature of the look their face carries when they stare back across at me or don’t. If their face carries a look of impatience, then they cannot wait to see their secret lover. If the look harbours anger or revenge, they have probably just been dumped or handed their divorce papers by their cheating partner and father of their four children. If their face appears to be in a state of temporary squashed-nose revulsion, they have probably overeaten at the Christmas dinner outing with work colleagues and have just filled their car with the flatulent appreciation of too many Brussel sprouts. If the face of the other driver looks deadly serious, is bland and looks straight ahead in a glare of fixed determination, they are most probably a killer in the process of their wicked deed.
But if they are simply smiling and singing along with their car radio, they are obviously, ‘Driving Home for Christmas’.
Sheila and I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Love and peace Bill xxx