Christmastime 1984: The Band Aid Song Changed My Life

Each December, the promise of these words overtakes me, and again, I believe a better world is possible

Photo by Alexandra Dubinina on Unsplash

He was barely known in America, but the song’s opening line was granted to Paul Young. He states the obvious to us: “It’s Christmastime.” So wonderfully, he tells us there is “no need to be afraid. At Christmastime, we let in light and banish shade.” Beautiful, right?

From the moment I heard those words, I was transported. Having just returned from a three-month exchange experience in Switzerland, the horizon of my world had been rapidly and forever expanded. Pushed out beyond the site of my imagination, my summer in Switzerland told me what I always knew: There is so much more to life than just trying to buy more stuff and then upgrade that stuff to stay materially balanced.

Bob Geldof and Midge Ure pulled together Band Aid to fund anti-famine efforts in Ethiopia. Bringing together all of the biggest names of British pop, the song was then, and still is, one of the most inspirational ones I ever heard.

Having fully aligned myself with my political identity in a small village near Basel, Switzerland, that summer, when I heard the MTV report about the song in November 1984, I knew something special was underway.

It was said the proceeds from the sale of the song would combat the terrible famine underway in Ethiopia. While that wasn’t something I knew a lot about, I knew that if anything could agitate Reagan conservatives, then I was all for it.

The disdain the Right then had for anyone poor and needy was alive and well — it would spawn Trumpism, and I would even be willing to bet that no Trumpist or conservative today ever found anything good in the words of this song.

However, those words made me more powerful in my commitment to improving this world. Shortly after hearing the song, I “adopted” a child in Ethiopia through “Save the Children.” I received letters from her and pictures of her in kindergarten.

My lifelong commitment to improve and strive to make this life fair for as many people as possible was underway. I resented the notion that only the wealthy or the white should always be the beneficiaries of our nation’s resources. I was on a “mission from God,” as “The Blues Brothers” famously said. The hate and vileness of the right, I knew, was destined to fail — someday, I hoped, we would all be living in the spirit of this “Do they know it’s Christmas.”

When Boy George sings about a “world of plenty” and then is followed up by Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon singing, “There’s a world outside your window, and it’s a world of dread and fear.”

I was sold. I was a soldier set to go forward, determined to shine a light on the fraud of our “world of plenty.” What has this “plenty” gotten us? Our earth is being destroyed by the endless cycle of produce, consume, throw away.

As COVID showed us, there is so much we can live without. The run on toilet paper was such an embarrassment to our nation — Americans in 2020 faced a crisis by hoarding toilet paper and paper towels. People actually fought over this stuff!

If anyone had been listening, the ethos of the Band Aid song was not to let those fights over toilet paper happen. The song’s ethos also called for all of us to be vaccinated.

The song beckoned us all to look into the mirror, at least at Christmastime, to find the rough edges of our society and then to sand them down a bit. Sadly, it does not seem that call was heeded, and if it was heeded, then it was quickly forgotten as we grew into middle age.

When I bought the 45 single of “Do They Know It’s Christmas,” I was seventeen. I didn’t know what I would become or where I would spend my life, but I knew that I hated the values of Reaganism. I knew that the TV show “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” made me sick to my stomach, not because I was against the rich but because it made the attainment of all of the superfluous wealth the symbol of what was good about America.

AIDS was ripping through Black communities, and somehow, that was “okay” with a lot of white Americans. Fox News was not yet in existence, and Donald Trump was just a big-mouth New York real estate guy who was barely successful. Oxycontin hadn’t yet been invented; climate change was something that could have been stopped. Gun massacres were nowhere near as prevalent and ubiquitous as they are today.

When I heard Bono, Sting, and so many others beautifully sing “Feed the World,” I believed that we could — I knew that we needed to do this because we are humans and inherently good.

It is 2021, and in a little over a week, we will enter 2022, potentially the last year of our American democracy. The world is racing full steam ahead for climate Armageddon, and a substantial minority of our country believes it will be necessary to have another civil war to “save” the country — these people believe that Trump is our salvation.

It looks bleak, people, really.

But I am energized because November 25th, 1984, has happened again for me. I heard the song and am aligned with the source of all goodness. Having never lost sight of that goodness over the past 37 years means one thing: the good humans will ultimately be victorious.

If you are feeling blue or pessimistic about the future, give the song a listen. It might not stop the madness, but it will make you cloak your soul in magic.