Come Christmas by Nick Bowen

I’d like to tell you a story about my friend, Nick Bowen, and about his new song, “Come Christmas” — a story of where my day job intersected with my music world with unexpected results. You never know beforehand what kind of friends you will meet and how they will affect your lives.

I met Nick Bowen in the late 90s at my very first job shortly after I left college. It was at a big insurance company with a lot of actuaries and analysts. I was one of the actuaries, and Nick was one of the analysts in the same department. And sure enough — if you get enough people together, you’re going to naturally have a good-sized group of musicians — especially among math types. Most of us really love music.

Nick and I sang together in the company’s singing group. I think we were called something like the “Royal Carolers” — I wish I could remember our exact name. While I sang with the basses, Nick sang with the tenors. I played piano occasionally for the group, and Nick played guitar. We would go around singing in country clubs, old-folks homes, and the like.

We also sang at company meet-ups, for which I composed some intermediate variations on Happy Birthday, including the styles of Western, Boogie-Woogie, Sad (minor key), and other funny experiments — and that little choir proved to be surprisingly proficient in singing all the right notes and even difficult passages. I must admit that they were even more skillful than most ward church choirs I’ve attended. Very impressive little group!

Anyway, one day Nick approached me, and played his Christmas song for me … “Come Christmas.” And he asked me to arrange a choral version. Here’s a recording of his original song …

I took up the challenge, and after a couple of weeks, the choral version was born. Here’s an excerpt:

When we sang, the first verse featured Nick as a solo (both guitar and voice), though sometimes we had all the men sing.

You’ll also note that I didn’t arrange a piano part, as this is meant to be just for guitar and choir — the perfect sound for this song. As with most guitar music of this kind, the chords are provided, and the performer can choose how to play each chord. Nick has his version in the video above, and I made up my own version of guitar in the recording of the choral version below. Here — you can start listening as you continue reading …

In the second verse, the tenor soloist (or all tenors) keeps singing the melody while the rest of the choir joins in singing “ooh.” Of course, you can feel obliged to change this to “aah” or humming. We tried different sounds, and “ooh” seemed to work the best.

In the third verse, all the singers sing the words. Singing slower can help emphasize the moving parts. In all, the song was well received — one of our favorite memories.

A couple of years later, after a major insurance event, our company decided to stop writing business, so we split up and went our different ways, and I had gone years without seeing him.

Now, fast forward to 2016 to when I opened Melkim Publishing. I had started with a small but interesting collection of Christmas music, but one piece was missing … “Come Christmas.” I had wanted to include it along with the original opening, but I had two concerns. #1) I didn’t yet feel comfortable asking Nick to sell this music with my entirely new and unproven music publishing company. And #2) I didn’t know where to find Nick. I vowed to one day get around to finding and approaching him later after my company took off.

Though, 2020 started off relatively strong for Melkim Publishing, the coronavirus hit and decimated our choral sales. I basically shut down shop, except for fulfilling a few orders as they came in.

It was during this time I received the prompting to reach out to Nick and ask if I could publish our arrangement. This was around May 2020. At first, I ignored the prompting, as I still had the same concerns. Especially with coronavirus and slow sales, why would he want to have me publish his song?

And again around July, I got another prompting … “Just do it. He’ll say yes.” But still I ignored the prompting. I was too busy with other ventures, and putting together a new piece wasn’t in my schedule.

And then September — the prompting was much stronger … “Do it now, or you will miss your opportunity.” And — okay — I went ahead and did it. After doing some clever internet searching, I found him and send him a message. And sure enough, he was receptive. Even when I told him sales would be slow at first, he said, “Let’s do this.” He was ecstatic that I remembered him and wanted to do this project.

We went back and forth for a couple of months, as the whole time he was going through some medical procedures, which slowed down the boring legal stuff. We finalized everything at the end of October, which allowed me to release the song at the beginning of November 2020. When I sent him a link to the piece, he said, “It’s humbling to see my composition listed among the Christmas classics.” And he then suggested another new project using his poetry.

That was the last email I received from him. He stopped responding to my emails, and it wasn’t until about January that I thought to look for an obituary. And sure enough, he had died in mid November — shortly after his piece went up for sale. Dying in his hospital bed, I’m happy that he could feel this joy at the end — that his composition had been unleashed upon the world — that he had lived long enough to see he had made a difference.

I also looked back and then fully understood the promptings I had received. Even though I had my own schedule, and I was depressed — and whatever excuses I had going on, the promptings had me stop everything and “do it now.” I had no idea that Nick would be dead in a couple of months. This is yet another instance in which the Spirit was able to whisper and let me know the things I needed to be doing. If I had waited even one week more, the piece might not have been published, and Nick never would have seen his song become available to everyone.

The choral version is available here. And coming shortly, Nick’s original song will be included in a collection of new Christmas carols. Keep an eye out for it — I’ll come back and add a link once it’s ready.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this story, and I hope you can enjoy performing this song.