I wrote Believe for the people who find Christmas complicated.
For a long time, that was me. The season is supposed to be full of warmth and certainty, but often it isn’t. It can highlight what’s missing just as much as what’s there. This song came from sitting with that tension — the distance between the Christmas we’re shown and the one we actually experience.
The lyrics borrow the familiar images — the roaring fire, the snow, the perfect tree — but always at a remove, as if they belong to a film rather than real life. Musically, I wanted the same sense of contradiction. Traditional Christmas sounds appear — bells, organ, choirs — but the piano keeps turning away from expectation, finding stranger, less predictable shapes.
There’s a loneliness in the middle of the song that felt important to leave untouched. But I also didn’t want it to end there. Every year, no matter how hard the last one was, we’re offered the chance to hope again. The final lift in the song isn’t certainty — it’s an invitation.
That’s what Believe is for me. Not blind optimism, but the quiet decision to keep going anyway.