Friday 18 December 2020

HAPPY CHRISTMAS (WAR IS OVER)

 


Happy Christmas (War Is Over) is a song written by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. It was published on 6th December 1971 on the B-side of a record, with, on the A-side, Listen the snow is falling, written by Yoko Ono. Happy Christmas (War Is Over) is one of the most important and best known Christmas songs.

The authors recorded this song as a protest against the war in Vietnam and they wanted to attract interest on it. The war had started in 1955, sixteen years before and it would continue until 1975.

In that war the USA used chemical weapons such as napalm, a substance, containing petrol, which can cause serious burns. This incendiary mixture killed a lot of people and it made the war incredibly bloody.

However, with their song, Yoko Ono and John Lennon did not want to describe the terrible situation in Vietnam; instead, they composed a laic prayer to invoke the Christmas spirit to fight the dread and the war in the world.

Indeed, they wanted to wish peace everywhere and to express their hope that everyone could be happy. Moreover, this song is important because not only it is against the war, but also it desires to end discrimination. John Lennon wrote:

So happy Christmas for black and for white

For yellow and red ones let's stop all the fights

They wanted to help people understand that Christmas is for everybody and that we should ensure that everyone can enjoy Christmas in peace. To do this, we must stop every conflict, every war and every discrimination.

In addition, the authors used a children’s choir to make the message of this song more intense.   Lennon made the choir sing the most significant and meaningful phrase of the whole song:

War is over, if you want it

War is over now.

Although the war had not finished yet, John Lennon wrote this sentence because according to  him each person can make the difference to stop every war and he encouraged to do it, saying Let’s stop all the fight.

In conclusion, Happy Christmas (War Is Over) speaks about the real Christmas spirit because this song is a eulogy to peace. The message of this song is always current, because we often hear and see hateful words and acts; nowadays, it happens in much more ways than in the past, for example on social media. 


John Lennon

 

John Lennon was born in Liverpool on 9th October 1940 and he died in New York on 8th December 1980. He has been part of Beatles since 1960, but in 1970, this band, formed by Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney and George Harrison, broke up. He got married twice; the second time, he married Yoko Ono. In 1975, they had a son, Sean Lennon Ono, while Lennon had have Julian and his wife had have Kyoko from their previous marriages. To the two of them, Lennon and Yoko Ono wished Happy Christmas in the video of their song, in 1971.




On 8 December 1980, while he and his wife were coming back home, a mad boy called Mark David Chapman shot five times at John Lennon who died.

On 14 December, many people stopped their jobs and activities for 10 minutes, as Yoko Ono wanted.

There was no funeral, and a part of his ashes was scattered in the Atlantic Ocean.

However, in spite of his death, his ideals and his music continue to live.

 

                                

 Angelica Tozzi, 3scB  

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