Which Christmas Song is the most Christmassy?
By Cormac McCarthy
Today is the 21st of November. At this point Michael Bublé has nearly defrosted, Mariah Carey has already earned enough to pre-order her next superyacht, and the annual debate over “That word in Fairytale of New York” is already heating up. That’s right folks, it’s Christmastime.
No festival or holiday in the calendar manages to come quite as close as this one in terms of scale. Yet, for all of the vapid consumerism and seasonal pressure that accompanies the holiday, I can’t help but love it just a bit.
A key factor to this is the music. That warm blanket of songs that eventually become positively sickening by Stephens’ Day, form the perfect soundtrack to the holiday. While, in most cases they are a blatant attempt at proven commercialism, nevertheless, they signal a brief hiatus from the hustle and bustle of life; a tonic to the dirges.
But, of all of them, which is the most Christmas of all of the Christmas songs? Which one, upon the tuning of the radio to XmasFm, do we want desperately to appear? Which one is the most sickly-saccharine, picture-postcard, pompous of them all?
Christmas music can be divided into four distinct sub-genres. The big band, jazz standards of the 1950’s, where we find “Let it Snow”, “Winter Wonderland”, “Santa Baby”. There are the simple, traditional tunes like “Jingle Bells” and the “The 12 Days of Christmas”.
There are the 1970/80’s rock pop staples such as Slade’s “Merry Xmas Everybody”, John Lennon’s “Merry Xmas (War is over)” and Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmastime”. Then there are the modern R&B-infused pop numbers such as Ariana Grande’s “Santa Tell Me” and Kelly Clarkson’s “Underneath the Tree”.
We all have our favourites, influenced over years of conditioning through listening to whatever CD one’s parents happened to have picked up for a fiver by the checkouts in Tesco in 1997.
Year after year, the one tune that shoots up the charts is Ms. Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You”. From radio play alone, she earns an estimated 3 million each holiday season. It frequently tops the list of favourite Christmas songs.
It’s not hard to see why. Released at a time when Carey was at the height of her global fame, the song keeps its message simple through her declaration of love for anyone in particular. The frequent use of nondescript pronouns allow it to be used in any context, very common for any pop-hit. The pulsing rhythm, with its high tempo and descending bassline in the climax of the chorus, give an unbelievably catchy song. Despite its considerable difficulty when attempting to sing along, it doesn’t seem to have affected its popularity in the slightest.
And to top it all off, the ever-so-yuletidy sleigh-bells never do let up.
However, sheer popularity doesn’t make it the most Christmassy of songs. If we were judging this by the most times the word “Christmas” is mentioned in a song then the winner would be Wizzard’s “I Wish it Could be Christmas Everyday”, which uses the word a whopping 45 times (Or 12% of total lyrics).
Or is it the most Christmassy song award given to the song that elicits the most incidents of fathers wearily turning to their children, and informing them of how the singer in question died. Then of course, “Fairytale of New York” by The Pogues featuring Kirsty MacColl. Controversial as it is, the song manages to subvert the overly twee genre by telling the story of a bitter divorce occurring around the holiday season. It still remains the second most popular Christmas song in Ireland.
In any case, we all have our own particular Christmas song that speaks to us in our own way, be it the song that we sang in a primary-school show, the eccentric old song that our grandmother knew all the words to or the tune that manages to clear all the fog.
For me, the song that announces the arrival of Christmas time is Jim Reeves’ version of Jingle Bells. The song is first on a rare Christmas album my father has. It has and is always the first Christmas song to be played in the family’s house on the 1st of December. For me, the season and all its many tidings, have not truly arrived until the opening bars of that tune come over the speaker.
Music is indeed quite powerful. It can bring us to tears; to action; it can bring smiles to our faces. It manages to sooth, enrage and enlighten us all at once.
The genre of Christmas music is no different. Somehow it manages to encompass every genre at once. It contains the power ballad that every patron sings to signal closing time; it contains the happy-go-lucky nursery-rhyme to teach children; the singalong anthem that unites the passengers of a long car-journey; the jazz standard that reeks of nostalgia.
Thus, without a note of mawkishness or sentimentality, the most Christmassy song of all Christmas songs is the one that is yours.