Loneliness finds the most company during Christmas time. There is the college student who does not have the money to go home.  He has to spend Christmas all by himself sipping Ramen noodles while watching his dormitory mates leaving for home one after another.  Then there is the spinster who returns home sitting at the dining table and seeing how her siblings are all clustered around their own nucleus family.  Though she is surrounded by relatives the reminder that she doesn't have a hubby and kids of her own slices her heart.  Still there is the mother who is keenly reminded that she has a plate less to serve this year.  This is because her daughter who had just lost her battle with cancer two months earlier will not be showing up for the Yuletide celebration.  Christmas is when loneliness gets its biggest recruitments; it is when emptiness makes its most effective infermoricals.  However, regardless of one's emotional (and spiritual) disposition during such a festive time, many will still turn to these Christmas songs for comfort and companionship.  This is where Christmas albums can be used by God as one of the most poignant ways to spread the Gospel.  And this is where Julie Meyer's brand new "Christmas" is poised to be a great ministry asset.   

Many of these songs on "Christmas" are interpreted and even birthed through Meyer's own experiences.  On a song like "Please Remember Me," Meyer actually describes a time some 23 years ago when she moved to Denver, Colorado.  Due to her financial restraints, it was also her first Christmas she could not go home to her family farm in Kansas. "Please Remember Me" is actually her letter she wrote to her dad and her family set to music.  Yet, in the midst of her homesickness, she is never griped with resentment or bitterness.  Rather, a spirit of thankfulness prevails especially when she sings, "as you gather around your Christmas tree, be thankful." Amongst traditional carols, "Please Remember Me" is one of three originals found on this festive offering.  Meyer currently lives in Kansas City serving at the International House of Prayer Kansas City (IHOPKC) as their worship leader, pianist, songwriter, teacher and intercessor.

 One of Meyer's strengths as a songwriter (as already evident in "Please Remember Me") is her ability to search beyond the surface in order to unearth the vignettes of truth that often escapes the casual observer.  And she again puts her canny gifts to work with "O Bethlehem."  Stepping into the shoes of an ordinary resident in Bethlehem on that night of Christ's birth, Meyer questions if he knew that history was in the making on that blessed night.   And let us allow the gorgeously sounding strings of "Who Would Have Thought" to sweep us into God's graciousness as Meyer marvels at God's choice of people He chose to use to be first news breakers of His Son's birth: lowly, uneducated ad uncouth shepherds.  As for the remaining 9 seasonal carols, they are not surreptitiously chosen. Rather, these are the songs that are influential in narrating Meyer's own life story.  "Do You Hear What I Hear?," for instance, was first song she was asked to sing in church after she first gave her life to Christ in 1977.  Thus, when we hear Meyer singing about the night wind whispering to the lamb and the lamb telling the shepherd boy who in turns reports to the king that "the child, the child/sleeping in the night/He will bring us goodness and light," Meyer also lines herself up as part of such a blessed assembly of witnesses.

Together with worship leader of IHOPKC, David Brymer, Meyer displays her sweet Alison Krauss-like vocals on an acoustic sounding "O Come, O Come Emmanuel."  While a children's choir that includes Meyer's nieces and nephews join her for "The First Noel."  Though many have ventured to tackle "The Little Drummer Boy," Meyer's version is of note.  Utilizing just voices to provide not only the percussional drive right through this hymn about a penniless boy who had nothing to offer Christ but to play his best on his drums for Jesus, Meyer's rendition is rifle with creative ingenuity.  Don't let the innocuous title "Christmas" deter you.  Emerging from these carols and originals, is a voice that not only empathizes with the lonely but through these Christ-centered songs she gently and lovingly leads us to Christ who has come to melt the hearts are benumbed by the frost of loneliness.