SOMEHOW TEN MORE CHRISTMAS SONGS YOU’RE PROBABLY NOT FAMILIAR WITH

YES, I STILL FOUND MORE OF THESE THINGS.  This is the fifth year in a row I’ve written a blog like this.  That’s FIFTY Christmas songs!  There’s literally more songs in these blogs than there are on most radio stations entire Holiday playlists!  And that, right there, is the reason why I continue to put these together.  There’s just SO many failed attempts to create the next Christmas standard out there, so many token new songs that were only slipped onto collections of traditional standards so that there’d be some publishing royalties coming in, so many little tunes that just got drowned out by bigger and better songs and never had a chance to catch on with the general public… AND YET WE AS A CULTURE STILL INSIST ON PLAYING “SANTA BABY” EVERY TWO MINUTES ALL DECEMBER.  It’s just not fair, I tell ya!  There’s so many songs just as good if not better than the handful that get played to death this time every year, and even more that aren’t necessarily “better” but would still be a welcome change of pace from hearing Wham or Mariah Carey for the hundredth time.  It’d be so easy to stave off the sheer Holiday musical burnout that so many people understandably complain about if we’d all just take advantage of the staggering backlog of under-utilized Christmas songs at our finger tips.  So please, do yourself a favor.  Read though this blog, read the previous ones, and actually check the songs out for yourself.  If you discover even ONE tune that wasn’t already on your playlist, but ends up there afterwards, then that’s a net positive for us all.  I will have made the world a better place and saved Christmas for everyone.  Or maybe some failed songwriter will get a few extra cents of royalties from that one novelty tune he wrote forty years ago.  That’s good too.  Either way, MORE CHRISTMAS SONGS!

“It’s Christmas Once Again” – Frankie Lymon 

Not gonna lie, this song here has actually been in the running for SEVERAL of these blogs, but kept getting bumped back to next year when I stumbled onto some new random obscurity and just HAD to include that instead.  Well, at long last, poor Frankie Lymon gets his Christmas due.  And I do mean poor, because WOW is Frankie Lymon ever one of the first big examples of Rock and Roll chewing somebody up and spitting ‘em out.  Most people, if they know the guy at all, just know him as that kid who sang the Doo Wop song “Why Do Fools Fall In Love?” and indeed his career never left an impact outside of the year or so he spent releasing records as frontman of The Teenagers.  It wasn’t for lack of ability, though, as “It’s Christmas Once Again” aptly demonstrates.  Telling you this is a lush orchestral ballad sung by a fifteen year old would naturally give you visions of any number of cringe-inducing vocal cracks, but Lymon is in fine form throughout, confidently holding his own against the wall of sound behind him.  Beyond that, let’s get one thing clear: I don’t claim “It’s Christmas Once Again” to be an especially remarkable song.  I mean, just look at that title.  There’s already songs called “It’s Christmas Again”, “It’s Christmas Time Again”, and “Christmas All Over Again,” and that’s just among the tunes I’ve mentioned in past Patreon blogs.  And the music is just as interchangeable as the title, with a big band in wistful mode and choirs right out of a Disney movie and lyrics that are the typical laundry list of Holiday tropes.  There’s not a lot here that Nat King Cole’s “Christmas Song” doesn’t do even better, aside from adding an extra octave or two on the lead vocals.  But one doesn’t need to do something different to still do something well, and “It’s Christmas Once Again” does everything it does very well.  If you like your Christmas music in that lush, old-timey mode, then this is a song that would sit quite nicely in between your Bing Crosbys and your Frank Sinatras.  More importantly, as far as I know, none of those more established crooners ever did a version of this tune at all, and that’s all the more reason to endorse throwing this one onto your playlist.  As always, I endorse more holiday variety!  Even second spent listening to “It’s Christmas Once Again” is a second when “The Christmas Song” isn’t at risk of being OVERplayed yet. 

(Speaking of which, one person who DID do another version of “It’s Christmas Once Again” was crooner Jimmie Rodgers.  His take is a lot smoother and more Jazzy, so if you really want more Sinatra-esque tunes in your Holiday repertoire, that one might be more up your street.  Personally, though, I think the livelier arrangement and more childish vocals on Lymon’s version just sound more… “Christmasy” to me.)

“I Told Santa Claus I Want You” – The Surf Boys 

Last year I discovered “The Wildest Christmas” by The Boys Next Door for the first time, and greatly lamented the fact that every Oldies station on America hasn’t played it to death every December.  Well, just imagine my shock when, mere weeks after that blog went up, I discovered ANOTHER ‘60s Garage Rock Christmas song that’s even MORE of an obscurity!  At least “The Wildest Christmas” seems to have a bit of nostalgia going for it in the Midwest.  I don’t think “I Told Santa Claus I Want You” ever managed to make much of an impact anyplace, even as a holiday novelty.  And that’s especially weird seeing as how it was the work of Harvey Moore, apparently a very influential disk jockey in Washington DC in the ‘60s.  You’d think he, of all people could have engineered some chart success for himself.  In case you were wondering, “The Surf Boys” didn’t really exist, they were just an obscure Maryland Garage Band called Nobody’s Children doing their best Beach Boys impression here.  It’s not all that great an impression, and the song itself doesn’t really stick to the bit either, shifting over to more of a Beatles knock-off by the chorus (and suddenly having an entirely different melody for the final verse in the process) but you know what?  I still dig all of that stuff. It’s a fun, energetic, catchy little bit of Garage Pop, with just enough jingle bells to work as a Holiday novelty (swiping the melody of “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” certainly helps), and even with its many imperfections it’s still on the more competent side of Garage Band tunes.  And really, in the world of Garage Rock, you actually WANT a little bit of imperfection in the mix.  That’s part of the charm.  I said it when talking about “The Wildest Christmas” and I’ll say it again here: think about the sheer number of times your local Oldies station has played “Snoopy’s Christmas,” then ask yourself if it really would have hurt so bad to sacrifice a FEW of those plays to make “I Told Santa Claus I Want You” more of a thing.  I mean, yeah, “Snoopy’s Christmas” is a demonstrably better song, that’s not in dispute.  But seriously, HOW MANY TIMES HAS THAT BEEN PLAYED?  We’re looking to address the evils of Holiday over-exposure here!  We need more variety and this is it!  Speaking of variety, this also seems like the kind of tune that’s custom made for an twee, ironic, ukulele-driven hipster cover.  I’m not necessarily ENDORSING that kind of behavior, but again, it’s an option that’s on the table.  Just putting it out there, that’s all.

“Christmas In My Hometown” – The Paris Sisters  

Okay, I’ll probably be very much on my own on this one, unless there’s some diehard fans of 1950s music at its most old fashioned.  Heck, this song probably sounded a bit old when it was recorded back in 1954. If I hadn’t looked up the release date for myself, I’d have assumed the song dated back to the mid-40s.  It’s probably not an accident that The Paris Sisters didn’t have a hit until the ‘60s when they started working with Phil Spector (they did Oldies radio stalwart “I Love How You Love Me”).  And yet, having just thoroughly dunked on this song, I do have a soft spot for “Christmas In My Hometown” for many of the very reasons it deserves to be teased.  What is Christmas if not a chance to escape our being horrible, HORRIBLE adults and revel in our cheesiest, dorkiest, most sentimental impulses for just a little bit?  This is exactly the sort of song that one of those seasonal rom-coms would play semi-ironically over a “coming back home” montage where everything’s hilariously falling apart.  Between the music box melody, punctuated by xylophone and backed up by an organ straight out of a roller rink, this ALMOST feels like a parody of whimsical Christmas tunes… but there’s still too much earnestness not to be taken at face value.  And that’s what I like about “Christmas In My Hometown.”  As cheeseball as it is… actually, I don’t even need to finish that statement, the point has already been made.

And if that doesn’t work for you, then let’s look at it from another angle.  Let’s wildly speculate on the sort of cover versions and other arrangements we COULD have gotten if the original actually became a hit in the first place.  I think that’s an even better selling point for “Christmas In My Hometown,” because I just really like the melody.  It’d translate well into one of those sparse-yet-epic instrumentals that Mannheim Steamroller loves to pepper their Christmas albums with, maybe opening with a literal music box version then ending on the usual wall of keyboards.  Alternately, if you strip away a lot of the forced whimsy and big toothy grins, I could see “Christmas In My Hometown” working very nicely as an acoustic, Country/Folk number.  Maybe that imaginary rom-com I suggested could use the original as an opening song might enlist some coffee house singer to do a solo guitar cover to play over the closing montage?  There’s versatility here, is what I’m saying, options that were never properly explored.

(By the way, I tried to track down any other versions of “Christmas In My Hometown” just to see if anybody else out there had the same thought process as me… but had to give up because WOW that title is way too common.  Maybe THAT’S the main reason the song could never become a hit: nobody could ever be sure WHICH “Christmas In My Hometown” anyone was talking about.  In particular, Country singer Sonny James had a pretty decent little tune by the same name.  Objectively speaking, it’s probably a better song than the Paris Sisters one, though it’s also waaaay less memorable, and much less Christmas-sounding.  If it weren’t for it’s own xylophone part, it sound pretty much like any standard Country weepie.)

“Goin’ Home (Sing A Song Of Christmas Cheer)” - Bobby Sherman 

Not gonna lie, I originally wrote a whole paragraph about Bobby GOLDSBORO here, instead of Bobby SHERMAN.  Don’t you make the same mistake, because Goldsboro’s token Holiday single “Look Around You (It’s Christmas Time)” is way less fun than Sherman’s.  However, the pedantic record geek in me would never allow me to bring up a gaff like this without also mentioning that, for as much as he’s remembered as the bargain bin Glen Campbell/John Denver, Bobby Goldsboro actually cut a number of Blue Eyed Soul tracks that are surprisingly close to the R&B side of Bobby Sherman’s teen idol Bubblegum formula, and it’s not as if Sherman didn’t record any Country songs of his own.  Okay, I think I’ve sufficiently convinced myself that I wasn’t going COMPLETELY senile just there, let’s finally get onto the actual entry.

Bobby Sherman recorded an entire Christmas album in 1970. It’s a decent if unremarkable set of Bubblegummy Showtunes that you’d probably mistake for The Partridge Family were it not for Sherman’s  distinctive Southern Boy twang, spiked with the occasional Country oddity or VERY strange Comedy skit.  Then, a year later, he knocked out a one-off holiday single that turned out FAR better than that whole album put together.  “Goin’ Home” admittedly cheats a bit by devoting the whole middle section to a rendition of “Silent Night,” not to mention an out-of-nowhere quote of “God Bless America” in the opening, but I still really like the parts of this song that are actually a new song.  I wish somebody had invested the time and effort into giving it an extra verse and original middle eight.  It’s a big, horn-drenched Gospel tune the likes of which were surprisingly easy to get on AM radio in the early 70s, and a great way to spice up any playlist that’s getting a little too bogged down in slow ballads.  I actually can’t come up with another, more familiar Christmas standard with the same vibe as this, which is all the more reason to advocate for it getting more exposure.  In fact, this is another one I’m a bit surprised I haven’t heard on Oldies radio around December.  I mean, unlike The Surf Boys, people actually knew who Bobby Sherman was… even if they occasional flake out and confuse him for Bobby Goldsboro.

…okay, wait.  Stop the presses.  I just went back and listened through the Bobby Sherman Christmas Album again, and it just now hit me that one of the tracks featured is “Christmas Wish” …WRITTEN AND PREVIOUSLY RECORDED BY BOBBY GOLDSBORO.  I’m not going senile at all!  I’m a freakin’ psychic!  IT’S A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE!

“May The Love of Christmas” – Beverly Joan Davidson/Doran Hayes/Erin Anne Montgomery

To repeat myself once again, I approach these lists from two directions.  On the one hand, there’s the songs where I just want more people to listen to the one version I like, which in many cases is also the only one that even exists.  On other occasions, however, I’ll present a song because I wish other people would try different interpretations of it.  After all, the ultimate goal of this endeavor is to stave off the monotony of hearing the same version of the same song over and over again, it doesn’t do much good to just introduce a single new tune into the mix and let THAT get over-played too.  My favorite finds are the ones where I can see a song being interpreted in several different ways, and as luck would have it, I’ve got actually stumbled onto a largely unknown tune that, somehow, DOES have several different versions!  

Unfortunately, it’s also a composition I know virtually nothing ABOUT.  I mean, I can obviously tell it’s a charming little sing-song melody with relatively straightforward lyrics, but I looked HARD for information about where the songs actually came from and learned very little.  The earliest version I’ve encountered is a 1963 single by one Beverly Joan Davidson & The Ken Davidson Trio, a record so obscure that the original YouTube posting where I first encountered it doesn’t even seem to exist any more.  (Good thing SOMEBODY saved it and re-posted it elsewhere, huh?). This is an EXTREMELY Country version, with heavy steel guitar and some teeth-clinchingly precocious kiddie vocals from lil’ Beverly Joan.  My appreciation of this kind of stuff has gotten better over the years… at least as far as the Country instrumentation goes.  I wouldn’t blame you if you find the vocals a bit much to take.  Still, it’s a good proof of concept for a straight Country take on the tune. I’m under the impression that Ken Davidson is the one who wrote this tune, because he apparently kept shopping it around to other singers over the years and massaged the arrangement quite a bit.  The version he recorded with Doran Hayes MASSIVELY tones down the Country aspects by eliminating the steel guitar entirely.  Instead, Hayes’ vocal is backed by just a single guitar part with a LOT of Jazz/Lounge flourishes.  This is straight up Christmas in the Coffee Shop right here, and it works quite nicely.  Throw this version in with your modern covers of the Charlie Brown Christmas songs and it’ll feel right at home.  And then there’s the Erin Anne Montgomery version, with adds a whole extra layer of instrumental tricks into the mix.  There’s a string quartet and some flutes and some precision sprinkling of bells and all sorts of Holiday song tricks.  I wouldn’t call the end result “lush” or anything, it’s still a fairly sparse song when held up to your average “O Holy Night” cover.  Rather, this version is another tune that feels like it’d work pretty well in one of your Christmas rom-coms.  Remember up in the “Christmas In My Hometown” entry?  This is what I was talking about, a pretty little Holiday tune that can hold up under multiple, very different styles and presentations.  And I can easily see this tune holding up under other arrangements as well.  It’s lively enough that it’d work as one of those bouncy, ultra-sugary tunes you usually see packs of elves singing, but earnest enough to be an earnest children’s choir piece.  Heck, I could even see this melody coming out of a music box and being a natural fit.  So come on, people!  Let’s make “May The Love Of Christmas” into a thing!

“Christmas Lullaby” – Mason Williams 

Mason Williams is one of those guys you know even if you don’t know that you know him.  The name “Classical Gas” itself might mean absolutely nothing to you, but you’d still recognize its faux-baroque guitar fingerpicking just from pop culture if you heard it.  And while that’s also the ONLY Mason Williams song 99% of the world has ever heard, that’s still better known than anything YOU’VE ever done, dagnabit!  Also, it’s a fair primer for “Christmas Lullaby,” which is pretty much exactly what you’d expect a song called “Christmas Lullaby” by the guy who did “Classical Gas” to sound like.  An elegant bit of acoustic guitar picking around a gentle little melody played on vibes, with a tasteful layer of strings on top.  Back when I first started doing these lists, I tried to avoid instrumental songs on account of that feeling a bit like cheating.  My thought process at the time was that somebody could just slap a Christmas name onto ANY wistful-sounding melody and try to pass it off as the next holiday classic.  But before too long, I realized that’s already what half the new Christmas songs written every year are anyway, only with lyrics as well as just titles and a layer of jingle bells dubbed over everything.  And besides, there really IS an art to sounding “Christmas-y” without actually having lyrics to specifically be about Christmas, and I’m not just talking about the jingle bells.  Lord knows I’ve already mentioned songs “sounding” like Christmas enough, and while the meaning of that is obviously up to personal preferences, “Christmas Lullaby” absolutely does the trick for me.  This tune really does have the whole “visions of sugar plumbs danced in their heads” vibe down pat, and I’m very much on record as liking anything that evokes that atmosphere of Christmas Eve night with no lights on other than the tree.  This is exactly the sort of tune that could easily be used to close out the end of a Mannheim Steamroller album… which I realize is the kind of thing I say a lot, but in this case Mason Williams actually DID record an album in collaboration with Mannheim Steamroller.  There totally could have been a Steamroller version of “Christmas Lullaby” at some point!  And really, there should have been!  Why didn’t they do that? …oh right, because there already IS an entirely separate Mannheim Steamroller song called “Christmas Lullaby.”  Okay, so it’s not exactly the most original title, but it’s still a lovely little melody that I think is full of Holiday charm and should totally be used to stretch out more people’s seasonal playlists.  At the very least, it could be on a few Christmas movie soundtracks as the song playing during the establishing shot of everybody sleeping before Santa shows up.  Or maybe some overachiever could write some actual Christmas lyrics for the thing?  I dunno, I just feel like this is another tune that deserves to be better known than it is.

“Come On Ring Those Bells” – Evie 

Alright, every so often I find myself talking about a song that really isn’t that unknown at all… in certain, very specific circles.  But then you step outside of that bubble and suddenly nobody has any clue what you’re talking about.  For example: “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday” is one of those standards that everybody’s borderline sick of in the UK, but Stateside it’s very much not.  Similarly, there’s plenty of my fellow Southern Baptists who spent years hearing “Come On Ring Those Bells” ALL the freakin’ time.  Originally written by Andrew Culverwell and popularized by singer Evie in the late ‘70s, “Come On Ring Those Bells” is a song I would hear in just about EVERY church choir Christmas performance as a kid… and virtually NOWHERE else.  In retrospect, it’s not super surprising, since “Come On Ring Those Bells” is a VERY Jesus-y song, and the last thing anybody wants to hear during this religious festival is something religious.  But here’s the thing: I keep mentioning songs having this nebulous, ill-defined “Christmasy sound” to them, and I think “Come On Ring Those Bells” fits that bill quite nicely.  It’s bouncy and happy and sufficiently jingle bell-y and has a sort of galloping rhythm to it that brings to mind “Over The River and Through The Woods” or “Caroling, Caroling.”  In fact, it’s got such a jolly atmosphere to it that I could easily see the song retaining its essential Holiday vibe if performed as an instrumental, which incidentally would also avoid people’s fear of saying the J-word.  Either way, I think this is the sort of song that really deserves to be used in more places than it currently is.  The whole Southern-y, Gospel-y vibe obviously lends itself to more hard Country arrangements, but I think you can just as easily sand off that twang and refashion “Come On Ring Those Bells” into other genres.  The melody has that sort of music box feel to it that just screams “earnestness” …well, maybe not “screams” but gently but resolutely states it.  Take another shot in the Christmas Song Pattern Blog Drinking Game, because I think this is another tune that would work well as a Mannheim Steamroller instrumental.  The point is, if you’ve heard “Deck The Halls” a few times too many, “Come On Ring Those Bells” is a good substitute to fit that vibe in a refreshingly different way.  Unless, you know, you actually ARE in that bubble where you already hear this song all the time as well.

“Christmas Time” – Jim Cagle 

Whoa boy, if you thought that last one was too well-known, then I’ve sure got the polar opposite for you right here.  This thing’s such an obscurity that the YouTube video where I originally heard it isn’t even around anymore (good thing “somebody” reposted it, huh?). And no, I don’t know the first thing about who this Jim Cagle guy is/was/whatever, other than I’m PRETTY sure he wasn’t the same guy as the football player who dominates my attempts to Google him.  From what I can tell, THIS Jim Cagle doesn’t seem to have recorded much of anything beyond this one holiday single… with the exception of some kind of jingle for a Michigan shuttle service?  Heck, the song I want to plug doesn’t even seem to have been the A-side of that Christmas record, but rather a Funky little ditty called “Santa Claus Jr.” which sounds like if Steely Dan got a side job as the backup band at a trucker bar.  No, I want to shine a little love on the SPECTACULARLY blandly-named “Christmas Time.”  This one’s more of a Smooth Jazz number, with some really silky guitar parts and slick chord changes throughout.  Ever since I got a near-fatal overdose of New Age/Contemporary Instrumental Christmas music during the post Mannheim Steamroller gold rush, I’ve had a real soft spot for this kind of immaculately polished Smooth Jazz in a Christmas context.  Now, I won’t lie, the lyrics are a pretty pedestrian pile of “Growing up sucks but Christmas is still nice” cliches, and Mr Cagle’s vocals are a bit too cowboy for a song this Jazzy.  Still, I think the song itself is more than strong enough to warrant rediscovery by some other like-minded artists.  If you’re a Jazz performer looking for some new tunes to spice up your setlist, something less bittersweet than Vince Guaraldi’s “Christmastime Is Here” but not quite as funky as Donny Hathaway’s “This Christmas,” I think this would suit your purposes quite nicely.  Alternately, if you’re just looking for good Holiday-themed Soul ballad to belt out, “Christmas Time” could easily be refashioned to fit that mode with just a less busy arrangement.  I mean, for as much as I’m calling this a Jazz song, that’s mostly in the arrangement, not the composition.  From a writing standpoint, the tune is pretty straightforward and soulful.  Just a piano and vocal could easily turn this into a Ray Charles-style showstopper.  Either way, it’d just be nice for there to be a version of the song out there in slightly higher fidelity than the lone version of the original that I’VE got.  Seriously, that’s the ONLY recording of this song I’ve been able to find floating around the internet.  The real Christmas miracle would just be for somebody to post a version that doesn’t sound like it’s been sitting a Goodwill bin for forty years.

“Christmas Time All Over The World” – The Smithereens 

The Smithereens are one of those bands I really ought to know a lot better than I do.  I mean, a decidedly 60s-obsessed Jangle Pop band, so devoted to the gimmick that they’d eventually record album-length covers of Meet The Beatles and The Who’s Tommy?  Sounds right up my alley, right?  I mean, yeah, it does, but… I dunno.  Even at the peak of my twin Retro/Indie obsessions in high school and college, The Smithereens just sort of got lost in the shuffle for me.  For the longest time, the only songs of theirs I’d even heard were their two tracks on the Children of Nuggets box set.  But of course, there’s nothing like The Magic of Christmas to overpower ANY blind spot in my musical library.  If you’ve got a Christmas album, I’ll sniff it out eventually, and of course The Smithereens have one.  The creatively-named Christmas With The Smithereens is a bit spotty in places (I’m not sure if they didn’t think through the inclusion of a cover of “Christmas” from Tommy on an actual Holiday album, or if they were thinking TOO hard about it), but for the most part it’s pretty darn tight.  Heck, they actually cover The Beatles’ “Christmas Time Is Here Again” as a full song! I literally asked for this exact thing in one of the earlier song blogs!  If only I’d known!

And speaking of stuff I wish I’d known in time for previous Christmas blogs, remember those Far Out There character soundtracks?  Remember the holiday sequels?  Well, if I’d known in time, then “Christmas Time All Over The World” would absolutely have been on Layla’s playlist, it's that same brand of Power Pop.  The Smithereens sound in general veers back and forth between Beach Boys and Beatles in a way that really shouldn’t work as well as it does, and “Christmas Time All Over The World” touches both ends of that spectrum.  The basic verses are pretty heavily indebted to “I Saw Her Standing There” but spiked with some “Rain” styled Proto-Psychedelia for the title drops.  But then the middle eight hits and suddenly the song is pure Beach Boys… or at the very least a “Back In The USSR” reference.  In fact, upon reflection, I suddenly wonder if The Smithereens ever covered “I Told Santa Claus I Want You” at any point.  I totally believe this bunch of record geeks COULD have stumbled across a copy at some point.  Anyway, if you want some more Retro Rock in your Holiday mix but are sick of yet another version of “Run Rudolph Run” or “Little Saint Nick,””Christmas Time All Over The World” should be right up your alley.  In fact, all the original songs on Christmas With The Smithereens would fit the bill.  Honestly, it’s a shame that I DIDN’T bother to keep up with The Smithereens, because this album came out in 2007, right around the time that my interest in the whole Indie boom/Garage revival thing was starting to wane.  It would have been nice to see that era of my life out with a more festive note.

“Driving Home For Christmas” – Chris Rea 

And we close out with another instance where certain readers in certain regions of the world will probably scoff at me calling a song “unfamiliar”… or possibly look upon me with jealousy, I dunno.  The point is, “Driving Home For Christmas” seems far from unknown in its native England, or Europe in general.  Heck, it was a top ten in a couple countries back when it was released as a single in 1988.  However, while it might have gotten some token Holiday playlist radio time over here when it first came out, that sure didn’t translate into any chart action, nor did the song make it into the broader American Christmas songbook as far as I’ve ever seen.  I only learned this tune existed when I stumbled onto it in a YouTube playlist, I’ve literally never heard it playing in the wild before.  Of course, I live in The States, where hearing Chris Rea in the wild has been a generally rare thing since the year 1989, but that still probably sounds odd to any Brits reading this, as he’s been a much bigger deal over yonder.  All that said, though, I quite like “Driving Home For Christmas,” if largely for very esoteric reasons.  Oh sure, it’s a charming little ditty musically, weirdly reminding me a bit of a mellow Holiday version of Joe Jackson’s “Steppin’ Out,” and I could easily imagine it playing on that Easy Listening station they play at the dentist’s office.  Rea’s vice is, um, an acquired taste, but the spritely if corny Muzak shuffle is nice inoffensive Holiday background music that easily fits my mandate of putting breathing room between the more over-played (in THIS market, at least) tunes.  That’s not what really makes the song click for me, though.  Silly as it is, I just really resonate with any Christmas song about sitting in the car.  I mean, I WAS born and raised in Atlanta, after all.  I spent about a third of my life in the back seat of my parents’ various vehicles.  More importantly, though, my Grandparents did NOT live in Atlanta.  They were a good hour or so further south, so in classic Americana fashion, The Holidays meant road trips out to The Country.  Thus, any song that puts me in the head space of crawling along the Interstate at night, brake lights on all sides, listening to our tapes full of Christmas songs on the way down to a family gathering, that’s going to put me in a good mood.  Yeah, I know the actual song is meant to be sarcastic and it’s about how miserable traffic can be.  Lord knows I probably wouldn’t feel the same way if I was actually the one doing the driving in that situation today, but such are the wonders of nostalgia, huh?  And still, even if you don’t share my own particular odd mental relationship with seasonal road trips, I still feel okay endorsing “Driving Home For Christmas” as a not bad holiday tune.  In fact, if it actually WAS on one of those road trip Christmas tapes we always played as a kid, I think it would have fit right.  So yeah, I say this is a fine bit of variety to counteract the more over-exposed Christmas songs… provided you happen to live in a region where it isn’t one of those over-exposed songs itself.  But even then, you gotta admit it’s a more enjoyable Holiday outing than some of Rea’s OTHER attempts at seasonal music.  Between the misery of “Joys of Christmas” and the fact that he’s on one of the versions of “Do They Know It’s Christmas,” “Driving Home” looks pretty good by comparison, huh?

And there we have it!  Yet ANOTHER blog full of Christmas songs which I came up with stuff to ramble about!  And you know what’s even crazier?  In the time between me finishing the first draft of this blog and the posting of this final version, I’ve already accumulated half a blog’s worth of songs for NEXT year!  THE CHRISTMAS NEVER ENDS!  In the meantime, I hope at least one of these ditties does indeed make it onto SOMEBODY’S playlist this Christmas.  You deserve better than having to hear “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” again!  Oh, but speaking of oddities, just wait until you see the OTHER Christmas song blog I’ve got cooking…