A-Z of music: C is for... Christmas songs

Festive favourites: Bing Crosby, Mariah Carey and Noddy Holder have all released hugely popular Christmas songs
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Jochan Embley19 May 2020

It’s October 28. You’re perusing the aisles in your local supermarket. As the music plays gently over the loudspeaker, your mindset is distinctly un-festive — after all, there are as many days left until December 25 as there have been since the August Bank Holiday. But then the song changes and you hear it, the same thing you hear every single year: the gravelly tones of Noddy Holder confirming that here it is, Merry Christmas, everybody’s having fun.

So how did we end up stuck in this kind of annual Groundhog Day — Yule Log Day, if you will — hearing the same Christmas songs again and again until the end of eternity?

It’s actually been going on for quite a while. Some historians reckon the Romans were the first to write music for the season, while there are records of Christmas carols being sung in the UK all the way back in the early 15th century. The trend carried on through the eras, but the Christmas song as we know it first began to emerge in America around the time of the Great Depression, with catchy, secular ditties boosting downtrodden spirits.

There are earlier examples — Jingle Bells dates back to 1857 — but it was in the 1930s that many of the songs we still hear now were written. Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town and Winter Wonderland, both perennial favourites, arrived in 1934. A year later Bing Crosby released a version of Silent Night, the song first composed 117 years earlier. This new recording was something of a Christmas miracle, going on to shift more than 30 million copies worldwide. In 1942, Crosby delivered his rendition of White Christmas, which is still the best-selling single of all time — 50 million and counting.

It’s carried on through the decades. In the 50s, Elvis Presley delivered his Christmas album, while Bobby Helms released Jingle Bell Rock. Next, in the 60s, it was the turn of Phil Spector, The Supremes and Darlene Love. Then the British took over — Wizzard, Slade, Elton John and Paul McCartney all got in on the act during the 70s. Even by the end of that decade, there were still so many festive staples yet to be released: Last Christmas, Fairytale of New York, Merry Christmas Everyone and, of course, Mariah Carey’s ubiquitous megahit All I Want For Christmas Is You, released in 1994.

After that, though, the public seemed to decide that enough was enough. There have been countless Christmas songs released since the mid-90s, but very few have ever scaled the same heights — Michael Bublé is one exception, but even his hits have been cover versions.

There is a feeling that we’re happy with what we’ve got — research carried out by Channel 5 in 2016 estimated that Slade’s Merry Xmas Everybody earns around £1m in royalties each year, more than four decades after it first hit number one in the charts.

So why do these oldies have such sticking power? There are a few theories. Perhaps it’s because many were released pre-internet, when there was relatively narrow access to the world’s music and people were forced to love whatever they heard on the radio. Or maybe it’s because these songs are only played for a few weeks each year, meaning we don’t tire of them as quickly. Really though, it seems to come down to one thing: good old-fashioned nostalgia.

“Generally, popular music is about putting yourself out there, new relationships, new beginnings, being young and single and dancing,” Joe Bennett, professor of musicology at Berklee College of Music, told the Washington Post in 2019. “Christmas music is almost the reverse of that, conceptually and lyrically. It is about homecoming, nostalgia, looking back to a more innocent time in one’s life or cultural history.”

It appears, even with modern Christmas songs vying for our attention — Ariana Grande’s Santa Tell Me is an irrefutable banger — we’re all content to wrap ourselves up in the fuzzy warmth of these old favourites.

And it doesn’t look like things are going to change anytime soon. As Mr Holder once warned us: “It’s only just begun.”

Listen: White Christmas by Bing Crosby

Read: The Carols of Christmas by Andrew Gant

Watch: Jingle Bell Rocks! (2014)

A-Z of Music: So far

C is for... Christmas songs

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