The Five Best Christmas Songs of All Time!
The Five Best Christmas Songs of All Time!
A happy holiday season to all!
The jack-o’-lanterns have all rotted away and have been eaten by worms. The bird has been cooked and reduced to soup. Someone has come home with a Black Friday Eye after that fistfight in the Target checkout lane. Ah, it’s officially the Christmas season! Happy now, Santa? After badgering us for months it’s finally your time, so I’d better not hear any complaints that you have to work now.
Though the stores have been celebrating for ages at this point, it is finally socially acceptable to break out your novelty light-up ties and begin the hunt for a lovely, flammable tree that will surly be nice and brown come the big day. It also means that it’s time to bust out all your favourite Christmas songs and put them on repeat for the next five weeks or so while extinguishing said tree’s frequent fires. Neato; I already feel like a kid again!
I would like to do something a tad different and share a handful of the music that I adore come this season. Sadly, it’s a short list given the sheer overplay of the traditional carols and contemporary hits. One can only handle so many first Noels and good king Wenceslas-es before the loss of brain cells begins. Well, that and the plethora of horrible songs that only emerge this time of year to boot.
Maybe if you’re all really bad for the rest of November, I’ll make a follow-up showcasing the worst holiday music. Until then, here are the five best Christmas songs ever made!
5. Jonathan Coulton: “Chiron Beta Prime”
Nothing says “Christmas” like a family in a penal colony on a distant asteroid after wronging our beloved Robot Council. The sheer audacity of those pesky Andersons! Despite these circumstances, they still manage to celebrate the holiday season for the few hours a day when they are not working deep in the spice mines. Even the wonderful mechanical protectors are getting into the spirit as they have dressed up like good ol’ Santa Claus for all the human inmates. What a kind and thoughtful gesture! Why, they even bring all those terrible people a tasty Soylent Green pie for dessert. How could you ever cross such loving automatons again?
This song is simply fun, regardless of the time of year. While JoCo has made quite a few different holiday tunes, including an entire album with John Roderick (whom you may now know as “Bean Dad”), this is probably my favourite one. While I genuinely love “The Week Between” from the aforementioned record, it’s about (you guessed it) the week between Christmas and New Year’s, not Christmas itself. Also, the controversy surrounding Roderick’s ugly past Tweets and the incident that resulted in his new nickname make him a very tricky figure to be praising in 2023.
At least this song gives us a sneak peek at the wonderful future that AI-obsessed tech bros have planned for us! Hmm, does anyone else hear robotic sirens or is it just me?
4. Emerson Lake & Palmer: “I Believe in Father Christmas”
As a kid, there was nothing more exciting than peeking out of the windows on Christmas Eve in between airings of A Christmas Story for a glimpse of Santa in the night sky. Or Father Christmas as he’s known in England, but I’m afraid to say “Christmas” so many times lest I awaken the Krampus. Oh hell, here he comes…
Though the second verse makes it apparent that Greg Lake and Peter Sinfield were not too keen on the over-commercialization of the holiday, the story they created is just so wonderfully nostalgic that one cannot help but curl up in a blanket with a mug of hot chocolate while listening. The sprinklings of Prokofiev in the instrumental interlude create a magical aura that sends me back over thirty years to my childhood despite that I was fifteen when I first heard this masterpiece. Suddenly I find myself missing footie pajamas.
Sure, the narrator realizes that Father Christmas is imaginary, but that’s just growing up. It’s not presented as a harsh collapse into adulthood, or a maddening ordeal that results in a murderous rampage many years later. Just a simple transition that most of us make on our own.
3. “Weird” Al Yankovic: “The Night Santa Went Crazy (Extra Gory Version)”
While we’re on the subject of murderous rampages, what holiday gathering would be complete without this classic tale? After years of forced goodwill and kindness, the big fat guy at last snaps and centuries of pent up anger and frustration are let loose! Utilizing firearms, flamethrowers, and various other instruments of pain and death, Santa unleashes his rage onto his elves and reindeer, going so far as to make sausages out of Rudolph. Oh, Santa why, indeed.
This alternate version appeared on the B-side of the Amish Paradise single, and rather than leaving Santa to rot in prison for seven hundred years as heard on Bad Hair Day, he is himself blown away by the SWAT team. Merry Christmas, kids! I can’t be the only one who would love to see a Rankin/Bass style music video for this, can I? Either rendition will do!
I first heard this take when seeing “Weird” Al live in New Hampshire back in 2000, and, like many, consider it the superior adaptation. Sure, the album version is bleak and cynical, but this presents us with a much more realistic outcome. After all, Christmas is about the bloody realism!
2. Celtic Thunder: “Christmas 1915”
Over one hundred years ago, in the first winter of the First World War, unofficial truces broke out along the Western Front as soldiers of the Allies and Central Powers briefly halted hostilities and observed Christmas together. It’s an historical event that gives me a glimmer of hope for humanity and the idea that we are naturally inclined to do good in the grand scheme of our brief existence on Earth. Similar fraternizing did continue in the second year of the conflict, but never to the extent of 1914. Such actions were strictly banned and severely punished thereafter.
Celtic Thunder sings of one such truce when the men came together amidst the horrors of war. Carolling and sharing drinks, they celebrated as brothers for a single night before the guns began firing again in the morning. In the heat of battle, the young German who came singing through No Man’s Land the night before is killed by the narrator in hand-to-hand combat. It’s brutal, it’s heartbreaking, and it’s entirely true.
With conflicts and violence erupting all over the world right now, and nuclear sabre rattling reminiscent of the Cold War becoming normalized once more, the spirit of unity that allowed for the Christmas Truce to take place is desperately needed before we annihilate ourselves. If ordinary people could create peace in the midst of battle, I think we can do better a century later. Strike that; we must do better a century later before we make 1984’s Threads a reality.
1. Roger Whittaker: “Christmas is Here Again”
You knew it was Christmas in my house as early as the evening of Thanksgiving when The Muppet Christmas Carol would be on the TV, and this song came over the living room’s stereo courtesy of an old cassette of holiday hits. I sincerely cannot remember a year without Roger Whittaker welcoming in the holidays when I was just a wee one. Hearing those first notes of the instrumental introduction bring back so many memories of simpler times before the terrors of adulthood and this whole “reality” business.
This song celebrates what matters: friends and family, sharing with others, and the simple, meaningful joy of the love that the season brings. It’s not proselytizing. It’s not overly commercial. It is not desperately seeking a hippopotamus or some fad gift that will be forgotten by the spring.
That has to be more important than all the “gimme, gimme” drivel that creeps its way into everything come September and October. You don’t need more material crap; you need to take care of yourself and others. Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Yule, or no one holiday in particular, this is what matters at the end of the night. It may sound a little trite, but it sure beats getting trampled for a new video game console or a Tickle Me Elmo.