“Like Scrooge’s nephew in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, I too think of Christmas “as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.” Or rather, I celebrate Christmas as a reminder of this human potential, and hope there are others who do the same. Christmas for me is not only pine scented evenings, ghosts of breath in the night air, warm living rooms gathered with loved ones around the snapping, crackling fire, the rich aroma of cinnamon and orange rind, soft and silent feather-down like snow descending in a deep dark wood; but also it is a reminder of who we are and why we are here. To give of oneself for the betterment of humanity: this is the meaning of existence, and what Christmas signals for me at the end of every hectic year. This album, My Christmas Plea, is a plea to humanity. In a year as divisive, and rife with tumult as this has been, I beseech each and every one of us to open up our hearts and minds, and have empathy for our fellow man, no matter how impossible that seems.”
- Matt Dorrien