Christmas (Stop and Smell the Baby Head!)

Darlene Love performing Christmas
(Baby Please Come Home) one final time on
The Late Show with David Letterman.

You know what I miss? Darlene Love singing Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) every year on The Late Show with David Letterman. In its absence, I’ve been watching this video of the last time she did it. It’s so perfect… her voice, the wall of sound, the set, her dress and hair… and when it starts to snow, I start to cry! Every time!! It’s just about the coolest, Christmas-y thing!!

And lest you protest that Christmas is NOT about snow and pop songs and glamorous ladies in gorgeous red gowns, consider casting this tune as a gospel song. See, Darlene Love loves her some Jesus. Her father was a minister, so of course she grew up singing gospel music. If you watch this video, you can see that she is completely on board with our Lord and Savior! I love the part where she says the Holy Spirit spoke to her through this song that we’re talking about right now!!!

And while Christmas Baby Please Come Home will never speak to me as pointedly and directly as it did Ms. Love, I hear it as an invitation from God to mankind—among the hustle and bustle of the season—to connect with Him. 

If you’re a Christian... forget all the cooking and shopping and wrapping and all that stuff that MUST get done before the 25th...  and snuggle up to Jesus personally. Lean in and get a good whiff of His immense love and grace.* Be the Mary in the Mary v. Martha story! You know that story in Luke: 

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” 

Mmm... baby head... go on, take a whiff!!

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” 

And if you’re not a Christian, then... Baby, Please Come Home! Nothing would please Him more!

*Since the Christmas story is about Jesus as a baby, I just thought about how whenever I hold my friends Jim and Lisa's baby Charlie (pictured, right), I take a huge whiff of baby head! Who can resist?!!!