“Happy Christmas (War Is Over)” was released in 1971. It was the follow up single to Lennon’s iconic peace song “Imagine” and capped off a very productive, high profile two year run that began with the bed-ins for peace that he and Yoko Ono held after first getting married. It was while conducting these bed-in for peace sessions that his other great anti-war song “Give Peace a Chance” was recorded. All in all, John and Yoko and friends managed to provide several anthems that helped to sway public opinion against the war in Vietnam, specifically and toward peace, in general.
For a long time, John Lennon had been feeling a sense of responsibility to use his public platform for political ends. He tried to do that while still a member of the Beatles with songs like “Revolution” but was stung by the criticism from the public (those who backed the military and those who were anti-war, too) that he was stepping out of line while subsequently not taking a firm enough stance. Once the Beatles broke up, Lennon felt freer to chart his own course. Needless to say, the presence of Yoko Ono gave him the confidence to follow his muse. Many people claim that Yoko Ono unduly influenced Lennon and that, in turn, helped lead to the band breaking up. My thought on the matter is that John Lennon always struck me as being someone who possessed a strong creative mind. I think that he always had a clear vision of who he wanted to be as a songwriter and as a musician. For a while he was able to satisfy those creative cravings within the structure of a four-piece band. But, as the 1960s rolled along, he grew and evolved (as all of the Beatles did). He became a father. He had toured the world and seen many different things. He was a husband and then a divorced man. He was also a member of a creative collective that introduced numerous musical innovations that helped to push an entire genre of music forward. It stands to reason that someone involved in that personal and professional environment would yearn for the freedom to chart their own course in life and in their career. So, my formal opinion is that in Yoko Ono, he found a partner who understood the importance of creativity and individuality and who encouraged him to develop his own voice with her fully by his side.
As a result of Lennon’s freedom from the Beatles and the support he received from Yoko Ono, the two of them started to take a far more formal political stance, especially with regard to the war in Vietnam. One of the lessons that Lennon learned from his negative experience with songs like “Revolution” was that he needed to approach his anti-war message from a different, more palatable perspective. The first step in this was to choose a side in the debate and stick with it. The second was to put as positive a spin on the message as possible. So John and Yoko began with the media spectacle known as the bed-ins for peace. These highly orchestrated media events were meant to mirror the various student-led sit-ins that were occurring on university campuses. The reasoning behind something as personal as being invited into John and Yoko’s bedroom space was that they believed the best way to develop a Peace Movement was to appeal to their listener’s sense of personal responsibility. They equated peace with intimacy and love. They took the issue of being pro-peace away from the control of politicians and the media and placed it in the hearts and loins of their fans. The message was that peacefulness was a feeling that was beautiful and wonderful and why wouldn’t you want to feel it all of the time. John and Yoko encouraged their fans to stop listening to arguments put forth by people whose interest was in perpetuating the war machine and the profits that come with it. They showed that love was beautiful and peace was like love. It was a simple and powerful message.
A mere two years later came “Imagine”. There is a reason that many people feel that this song is the number one best song of all time. It is easy to take the messaging contained within “Imagine” and find people who have tried to say the same thing by shouting and/or being strident about it. What made “Imagine” so powerful and successful was its gentleness. It is just John and his guitar quietly asking us to simply think in our heads and our hearts about a world that functions without so many organizational and political constructs that seek to categorize us and classify us into different groups. What if we could all be as one? How beautiful would that be? “Imagine” is easily one of the strongest worded songs one could possibly come up with and yet it comes across so peacefully and gently as to almost feel like an embrace. Every single day, thousands of people (me included) have made the pilgrimage to the “Imagine” mosaic tribute in Central Park, not far from the Dakota Apartments where John and Yoko lived and where he was shot and killed. There was just something uniquely special about this man. Imagine if more celebrities and billionaires dedicated their careers to the promotion of peace in the same way? What a world of possibilities that could be.
With the success of “Imagine” being so completely positive, John and Yoko decided the time was right to immediately follow it up with a new media campaign along the lines of the bed-ins for peace. However, this time the pair decided to market a simple message that people had the power to end wars for all time if they truly wanted to and acted accordingly. This message was broadcast by having John and Yoko purchase advertising billboard space across the US and the world. Each billboard showed the same simple message: War Is Over (If You Want It). By adding the words in the brackets, Lennon and Ono were placing the onus of responsibility on their listeners. But before anyone could reply that the issues of war were bigger than the power of individuals, John and Yoko cleverly counteracted that excuse by tying in their message with a song about Christmas. At Christmas time, they pointed out, individuals act in concert to spread goodness and kindness through charitable acts, all without anyone directing them explicitly to do so. So why couldn’t that same energy and joint mobilization be directed toward attaining something of greater and more enduring value such as an end to war? As if to play on the sympathies of listeners even more, they recorded the song with the help of the Harlem Youth Community Choir. This choir was made up of youth aged 4-12 all from Harlem. The angelic quality of their voices helps to diffuse the straightforwardness of the challenge that John and Yoko were giving to their listeners. Perhaps the best part of the planning of this song was its introductory line which simply says, “So this is Christmas…”. In essence, by reminding listeners that they holidays were at hand and that they all know how wonderful the mood is and how freely people give of themselves to others well then, if it can be this way at Christmas time, what is stopping everyone from applying this energy toward the goal of ending war and establishing peacefulness as the way we want to the world to be?
While “Happy Christmas (War Is Over)” was meant to be an anti-war song directed at ending the war in Vietnam, it has since become a holiday standard that you hear all of time on radio and in shopping malls. During the time of its actual release, this song never made much of a dent in the charts, barely cracking the Top 40. It did make the Top 10 in the UK and charted again in 1980 after Lennon was killed, as a wave of nostalgia and longing swept over the western world. It is unfortunate that John Lennon’s life was taken while he was still young and had so much love and positivity to give to the world. As I look out upon the state of our world today, I often wonder how he would have reacted. It seems to me that we are living in times that are the antithesis of John Lennon’s view of what the possibilities could be. I don’t say this to mean that his efforts, and those of Yoko Ono were all for not. Instead, I say it to indicate that I think many in our society, especially our leaders, have lost their moral compass and so have we, as individuals, when we follow them by giving them our votes. The solutions to the world’s problems are not impossible to understand. Peace feels like love does. It feels as positive as Christmas does. What is not to like about peace and love?
The link to the video for the song “Happy Christmas (War Is Over)” by John Lennon, the Plastic Ono Band and the Harlem Youth Community Choir can be found here. ***The lyrics version is here.
The official website for John Lennon and Yoko Ono can be found here and here.
The official website for the “War is Over” movement initiated by John Lennon and Yoko Ono can be found here.
***As always, all original content contained within this post remains the sole property of the author. No portion of this post shall be reblogged, copied or shared in any manner without the express written consent of the author. ©2024 http://www.tommacinneswriter.com
Oh, Tom. Where to start?
I would like to add so much to this post, because there is so much missing. John and Yoko were responsible for the bed-ins for peace, but it was a whole generation who gave John the idea to “Make Love, Not War!” Our generation, my generstion if I may, were already fighting for peace — particularly in Vietnam, but really everywhere, from the early-to-mid 60s and on. We were politically active before John even realized he had a voice. And he did not have that voice until after he met Yoko Ono.
I can’t remember where I read it, but one of John’s biggest regrets in life, he told a reporter in one of his last interviews, was not putting Yoko’s name on as one of the songwriters of Imagine. Most of the poem he actually found already written in a book Yoko carried around with her where she wrote ideas down as they came to her. John wrote the music, and he polished the words, but the inspiration to do so came directly from Yoko. She is the one who gave John a new vision, and helped him understand he had possibly the most powerful voice in the world at the time. He admitted in the interview that at the time Yoko had her art world, but he felt the music world belonged to him, so he selfishly put only his name as the only songwriter. Obviously he had not yet evolved as far as he soon would, and Yoko said nothing in order to give him the space to grow, and to work it out on his own.
So, yes, John helped sway public opinion against the war in Vietnam, and against war in general, but what he was really doing was giving a voice to a whole generation of his true fans, the ones all sround the world who called themselves Hippies.
Funny, but I took so long saying the above I forgot some of the other things your post inspired me to want to say. But I do want to make clear, especially to all those people who hated Yoko for breaking up the Beatles, without Yoko John would probably not have evolved as far as he did. And I for one am so very glad he recognized in Yoko a spirit that could give him a whole new purpose in life. John was famous before he ever met Yoko, but Yoko is the reason John is seen as the ray of hope for humanity that he is today. Individually, they were great on their own, but together they took on a power capable of changing this world.
And I believe their work is not finished yet. What is happening right now, this political turn to the right, is the last-gasp effort of the forces of evil to stsy in power. And the harder they fight, the stupider people will realize they are being. Trump may be their hero right now, but he is s total imbecile who could exterminate life on this planet. Life, however, is unbeatable. Trump is but a minor nuisance in the face of forever!