NEW YORK (AP) — To many Australians, Saturday is more than just Dec. 21. It’s “Gravy Day,” all because of a lyric in one of the most unlikely Christmas songs ever written.
“How to Make Gravy,” written by singer Paul Kelly, has become a holiday classic in Australia over the past few decades. It was cited this week by the nation’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, as he announced a decision to release five drug smugglers from prison, and is the subject of a new movie that creates a story behind the song.
“It has become our most-loved Christmas song,” Jeff Jenkins, of the Australian publication The Music, wrote this week.
The story is set in a prison, the lyrics coming from a letter an inmate writes to his brother to pass along a recipe for the family’s Christmas dinner. The song is about much more, though, as “Joe” expresses regret, longing, fear, paranoia, some humor and the near-universal holiday emotion of someone who wishes to be somewhere else.
The prisoner is writing, as the song says in its second line, on the 21st of December, “and now they’re ringing the last bells.”
The inspiration behind ‘Gravy Day’
Kelly wrote “How to Make Gravy” in 1996 after being asked to contribute to a holiday album being put together for charity. He wanted to record a cover of the Band’s “Christmas Must Be Tonight,” but someone else had already claimed it. So Kelly tried putting words to a melody he had kicking around.
Inspiration came from one of his favorite holiday albums, “A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector,” and Darlene Love’s recording of the classic “White Christmas.” Love includes writer Irving Berlin’s often-bypassed first verse, where the singer talks of being in Los Angeles while wishing to be somewhere snowy and cold.
“There’s a clue,” Kelly said in a TED talk explaining the song’s origins, and off he went.