Even though this holiday season will likely be a different exeperience because of the pandemic, some parts of the holiday will look (and sound) the same. GBH Morning Edition host Joe Mathieu spoke with GBH's Brian O'Donovan about his Thanksgiving playlist and some of the changes he's made to his annual Christmas Celtic Sojourn. The transcript below has been edited for clarity.
Joe Mathieu: It's great to see you on Zoom this morning, Brian. Thanks for coming in.
Brian O'Donovan: Great to be with you, Joe. I usually just hear you. When I quit my doom scrolling, I turn to Joe Mathieu. It's so early in the morning, but it's really great to be with you this morning.
Mathieu: Well, it's great to see you. The playlist, by the way, is at our website wgbh.org. So, Brian, is this an Irish Thanksgiving?
[Listen to the playlist at the bottom of this article]
O'Donovan: I've always loved Thanksgiving particularly, and I found it a quintessentially American holiday. Of course, we didn't grow up with it at all. We celebrated that those guys left, in actual fact. But when I came here first, I just found it was the closest holiday to our Christmas at home. Christmas wasn't as big a deal here, we found. But for families and people getting together and traveling to get together, making an effort to do so and taking some time off, I think the genius of Thursday and then having Friday off and a full weekend was more reflective of our principles of Christmas. So I was always attracted to the holiday.
Mathieu: Slightly less commercial endeavor than American Christmas.
O'Donovan: Exactly. No cards, no pressure, really, and that was indeed an attraction as well.
Watch: Do current events play into your Thanksgiving playlist selections?
Mathieu: Boy, I sure like to think so. And a salve for the problems we face is pretty great; it's a great way to use music. Brian O'Donovan, I know you're trying new things this year as well. You always host a Christmas Celtic Sojourn, and it's one that packs the house. And here we are in a pandemic, you're going virtual this year. How does it work?
O'Donovan: Yeah, that was an interesting project, Joe. When the pandemic was deepening and fairly early on in the summer, we realized we were not going to be able to gather with everybody around New England as we normally do. We also realized that this has become a tradition like the Pops of The Nutcracker or A Christmas Carol. It's become a tradition for people to base their holidays around. So when I asked our cast, musicians and support staff, "what should we do," they said, "whatever it is, let's do something." So we got together with a quarantine band up in Rockport to the largesse of Rockport Music and some of their donors up there, and literally quarantined to the point where we had a bubble — like the NBA of Christmas shows — and created a new show that we have now and are preparing for online. So that's what we're doing this year. We're going to be virtually with people in their homes.
Watch: Discussing this year's ambitious Christmas Celtic Sojourn recording
Mathieu: I want you to know that, Brian, one of my most memorable mornings here on radio was in the darkest part of the surge last spring when you joined us one morning and the news was so awful that we could barely get through a show. You brought us a poem to help us think and to cope. And you have another one for us today in the spirit of Thanksgiving. I want to thank you in advance for the reading. What will you be bringing us?
O'Donovan: This is a really interesting one. It was the point of the week in The Irish Times by somebody who is not actually a writer -- he's a barrister, I believe, in Dublin. But he wrote a beautiful poem that I think is really more poignant today because we're in the darkest time of COVID [and] we're feeling quite isolated. And yet it does look optimistically at a time when this might end.
It is simply called "When", Joe.
And when this ends we will emerge, shyly
and then all at once, dazed, longhaired as we embrace
loved ones the shadow spared, and weep for those
it gathered in its shroud. A kind of rapture, this longed-for
laying on of hands, high cries as we nuzzle, leaning in
to kiss, and whisper that now things will be different,
although a time will come when we’ll forget
the curve’s approaching wave, the hiss and sigh
of ventilators, the crowded, makeshift morgues;
a time when we may even miss the old-world
arm’s-length courtesy, small kindnesses left on doorsteps,
the drifting, idle days, and nights when we flung open
all the windows to arias in the darkness, our voices
reaching out, holding each other till this passes.
- "When" by John O’Donnell, published in The Irish Times
Listen to Brian O'Donovan's Thanksgiving playlist
