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The Lost Christmas Eve is the fourth album by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. It was released on October 12, 2004, and is the last album in their "Christmas trilogy", with Christmas Eve and Other Stories (1996) and The Christmas Attic (1998) coming before it. All three albums, as well as their The Ghosts of Christmas Eve DVD, were featured in the The Christmas Trilogy box set.

Storyline

In this symphonic tale, the little angel from this album's two Christmas predecessors is once again sent on a mission from God: to find a person who is most like the image of Jesus. However, unlike the other trips, the angels can only use his wings for when he arrives on Earth and when he leaves. Looking for a likely place to search, the angel lands in New York City.

As soon as he touches the ground, he notices a street performer weaving a story about the ball of the Wizards of Winter to a group of children. He then enters a hotel, and as he enters the ballroom, he watches the ghosts in there dance around. Then he leaves and walks into a blues club, where a jazz band is playing music, eventually the whole bar gets together and starts singing along with the jazz band, except for one man who leaves without a word.

The angel noticed that the man left a trail of blood. The blood came from a wound in the man's heart and only angels are able to see this. As he followed the man, who had been the last one home from work, the angel saw that this man did not like Christmas one bit. Due to his curiosity, the angel peered into the man's heart to find the reason behind the man's yuletide hatred.

As the angel delved into the man's past, he saw that he had not always hated Christmas and in fact loved it like any other child. His family was a good Christian one and he had been taught that all of man are created in God's image. He eventually got married and his wife became pregnant. On the night of the birth, things were going as planned and normal. However, the man then noticed that there were many doctors rushing for his wife's room, but there were none leaving. The doctor told him that after the birth, she had hemorrhaged and that, unfortunately, they were unable to save her. When they gave him his son, the baby looked strange. The doctor explained that because attention was focused on the mother, the baby had been neglected air and had suffered severe brain damage; he would be unable to function as a normal person in adulthood and would be lucky if he learned to talk. Enraged by this outcome, the man shouted at God, saying that he saw nothing of God in his son. The man gave the baby back to the nurse and asked if the child could be placed into a facility.

After seeing this, the angel let go of the man, who did not notice the angel peering into him. He later encountered a young child in front of a toy store, who claimed to be staying with her parents on a third floor room of the hotel across the street. She asked him if he had a son. The man responded with a short and gruff "No," which reminded him of his son. The man told the girl to go back to her room, then called a cab and set off to find his son.

Eventually, he arrived at a hospital, similar to the one where his son was born, and asked about his son. A nurse took him to a room where the son, now a grown man, was rocking cocaine babies to sleep. When the man asked if his son could talk, the nurse, realizing that it had been a while since they had met, said "No, but he's a good listener." After so many years, father and son were reunited.

The man asked his son to move out of the complex he lived in to stay with his father, to which he agreed. They then took a cab to the hotel across the street from the toy store to find the girl and asked for the girl's room. However, strangely enough, there was no third floor to the hotel, nor did they have a room with the same number the girl had told him. Confused, the man returned to the cab with his son. The man then took out his briefcase and dumped its contents out on the sidewalk. The son gave a puzzled look, to which the man explained that he was going to quit his job to get a job at the hospital where his son worked. The son gleefully smiled.

When the angel returned to Heaven, God asked the angel who was most like Jesus. The angel at first gave the name of the man's son, but then changed this to the name of the story teller, the jazz player, the man, and all of the other people he had seen. It was at this point that the angel realized that at Christmastime, almost everyone appears to be in Jesus's image.

[edit] Track listing

  1   Faith Noel   04:32
  2   The Lost Christmas Eve   05:33
  3   Christmas Dreams   03:54
  4   Wizards In Winter   03:06
  5   Remember   03:25
  6   Anno Domine   02:13
  7   Christmas Concerto   00:43
  8   Queen Of The Winter Night   03:12
  9   Christmas Nights In Blue   04:18
  10   Christmas Jazz   02:17
  11   Christmas Jam   03:48
  12   Siberian Sleigh Ride   03:09
  13   What is Christmas?   02:51
  14   For The Sake Of Our Brother   03:09
  15   The Wisdom Of Snow   02:01
  16   Wish Liszt (Toy Shop Madness)   03:42
  17   Back To A Reason (Part II)   04:53
  18   Christmas Bells, Carousels and Time   01:05
  19   What Child is This?   05:57
  20   O' Come All Ye Faithful   01:26
  21   Christmas Canon Rock   05:03
  22   Different Wings   02:44
  23   Midnight Clear   01:38