Happy holidays, everyone. :)

Take a break from the jingling bells - here's something to accompany your reflections on 2013 as we cross over to the new year.

Clair de lune, by Claude Debussy, played by Stephen Malinowski, with graphical score.

Clair de Lune means "Moonlight". Here's more background about the music. It is based on a french poem of the same name.

Moonlight by Paul Verlaine, 1869 (Translated into English)

Your soul is a chosen landscape
Where charming masqueraders and bergamaskers go
Playing the lute and dancing and almost
Sad beneath their fanciful disguises.

All sing in a minor key
Of victorious love and the opportune life,
They do not seem to believe in their happiness
And their song mingles with the moonlight,

With the still moonlight, sad and beautiful,
That sets the birds dreaming in the trees
And the fountains sobbing in ecstasy,
The tall slender fountains among marble statues.

Okay, well, so maybe it's not wildly happy holidays.
But quite sweet, precious, beautiful, happy holidays.