I'd love to have a Christmas classic under my belt. It's hard to

Host:
The snow fell thick and quiet outside, softening the sound of the city into a lullaby. The streetlights glowed like lanterns, each haloed in white. Through the frosted window of a small recording studio, two figures sat amid tangled wires, glowing dials, and half-empty coffee cups that steamed like promises that hadn’t yet cooled.

The room smelled of pine-scented candles and tired ambition, the air warm but humming with that fragile electricity of creative frustration.

Jack was hunched over a guitar, plucking the same melody again and again — half hope, half hesitation. Jeeny, sitting cross-legged on the couch, scribbled in a notebook, the eraser dust falling like fine snow onto her jeans. A string of colored Christmas lights blinked lazily along the wall, their glow pulsing like a slow heartbeat.

Jeeny: [reading from her notes] “Patty Smyth once said — ‘I’d love to have a Christmas classic under my belt. It’s hard to write a Christmas song.’”
Jack: [stops strumming] “She’s right. It’s the hardest kind of song to write.”
Jeeny: “You’d think it’d be easy — bells, snow, sentiment. But it’s not.”
Jack: “Because Christmas songs aren’t about Christmas. They’re about memory — and memory doesn’t rhyme on command.”
Jeeny: [smiling] “Exactly. You’re not writing music, you’re writing nostalgia.”
Jack: “And nostalgia is a liar. A beautiful liar.”

Host:
The lights from the mixing board blinked softly, their rhythm like the pulse of a sleeping machine. Jack ran his fingers through his hair, staring at the ceiling as if the melody might be hiding there.

Jeeny: “You know what makes it so hard? Every Christmas song is supposed to sound familiar the first time you hear it.”
Jack: “Right. It has to feel like it’s always existed.”
Jeeny: “But you can’t fake that feeling. You have to earn it.”
Jack: [quietly] “You have to make people remember something they never lived.”
Jeeny: “Yes — that’s the art of it. Universal intimacy.”
Jack: “So you’re not writing for the present. You’re writing for people’s ghosts.”
Jeeny: [softly] “Their ghosts, and their children’s.”

Host:
The snow outside thickened, flakes clustering on the glass, blurring the neon signs across the street. The world beyond the window felt like another dimension — distant, dreamlike. Inside, the only sound was the slow hum of an amplifier and the quiet scratching of Jeeny’s pencil.

Jeeny: “You know, I think Smyth understood something profound there. Writing a Christmas song isn’t just about melody. It’s about honesty. You can’t fake warmth — people feel it.”
Jack: “That’s the curse of sincerity. It only works if it’s real.”
Jeeny: “Exactly. You can’t ‘compose’ joy. You have to remember it.”
Jack: [grinning] “Or invent it convincingly.”
Jeeny: [smiling] “You’re too cynical to write a Christmas song.”
Jack: “And you’re too sentimental to write one that isn’t cheesy.”
Jeeny: [laughing] “Maybe that’s why we’re perfect collaborators.”
Jack: [raising an eyebrow] “Disaster in harmony?”
Jeeny: “Authenticity in conflict.”

Host:
The guitar hummed again, this time softer, slower. Jack’s fingers found a new rhythm, uncertain but promising. Jeeny closed her eyes, listening.

Jack: “You ever notice how the best Christmas songs are always about longing? Not celebration — longing.”
Jeeny: “Yes. Because Christmas isn’t about what’s happening. It’s about what’s missing.”
Jack: “Exactly. Love that isn’t here anymore. People who can’t come home. Lights that can’t quite hide the loneliness.”
Jeeny: “That’s why ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ still hurts. It’s not joy — it’s survival.”
Jack: “And that’s what makes it timeless. It’s not pretending.”
Jeeny: [softly] “So maybe the trick isn’t to write something happy. Maybe it’s to write something true.”
Jack: [playing a few chords] “Truth doesn’t chart well.”
Jeeny: “But it lasts.”

Host:
The heater clicked, filling the silence between their words. The Christmas lights blinked unevenly, one of them flickering out completely — a small failure that neither of them fixed. Jack strummed again, his voice low, testing a line that barely held together.

Jack: [murmuring] “Snow keeps falling, but the house feels small tonight…”
Jeeny: [finishing softly] “…and the echoes of laughter still glow in the light.”
Jack: [pausing, surprised] “That’s good.”
Jeeny: “It’s honest.”
Jack: “Yeah. Honest hurts.”
Jeeny: “So does Christmas, sometimes.”

Host:
For a moment, neither spoke. The air felt heavy with the tenderness of things they hadn’t said — old regrets, half-finished songs, half-finished lives. Outside, a car horn broke the stillness, then disappeared down the snowy street.

Jeeny: “You know, Smyth wanted a ‘classic.’ But classics can’t be designed. They happen accidentally — like love, or loss.”
Jack: “Or both, at once.”
Jeeny: “Exactly. You write the song. The world decides if it remembers.”
Jack: “So writing a Christmas song is like sending a letter to the future.”
Jeeny: “Yes. You write in hope that someone you’ll never meet will hum it someday and feel less alone.”
Jack: [smiling faintly] “The closest thing to immortality.”
Jeeny: “And the most fragile kind.”

Host:
The snow had stopped now, leaving the world quiet and white. A single car passed, its headlights painting the studio walls in fleeting motion.

Jack leaned back, setting the guitar down. Jeeny tore a page from her notebook, folded it neatly, and placed it beside him.

Jeeny: [softly] “You know what’s beautiful about Smyth’s line? It’s not ambition. It’s vulnerability. She wasn’t saying she wanted fame — she was saying she wanted to belong to people’s joy.”
Jack: “Yeah. To be a part of their December.”
Jeeny: “Exactly. Every artist wants that — to be replayed when the world feels too cold.”
Jack: [nodding] “To be a sound that keeps someone warm.”
Jeeny: “A song that reminds them love still exists — even if only in melody.”
Jack: “That’s all a Christmas song is. A promise wrapped in sound.”

Host:
A long silence filled the room, not awkward but reverent — the kind that feels like prayer.

Jeeny turned off the lamp, leaving only the string of colored lights to glow faintly in the dark. Jack’s guitar rested on the chair beside him, silent but waiting.

And as the quiet of the night settled over them,
the truth of Patty Smyth’s words seemed to shimmer in the dim light —

that to write a Christmas song
is to attempt the impossible —
to turn fleeting joy into permanence,
to capture warmth in a world that forgets too quickly.

A Christmas classic isn’t written;
it’s found,
somewhere between memory and melody,
between laughter and loss.

For the best holiday songs
don’t decorate happiness —
they redeem it.

They whisper that love once lived here,
that it might return again,
and that even in absence,
there’s still harmony.

And perhaps,
as Jack and Jeeny sat beneath the tired glow of colored lights,
they understood what Smyth meant —

that the hardest thing to write
is not the song itself,
but the feeling of believing in wonder,
even after the music stops.