EVEN MORE Christmas Songs You Might Not Know About
Added 2021-12-10 06:24:32 +0000 UTCYES. I’M WRITING ANOTHER ONE OF THESE, I’LL NEVER STOP AND YOU CAN’T MAKE ME.
As I’ve said on numerous occasions, Christmas songs may be one of my greatest joys in life, but I can still totally sympathize with anyone who gets sick of the same three versions of the same two dozen songs over and over again for two months straight. Or maybe not so much "sympathize" as "pity," because unlike you saps, I'VE got an ever expanding catalogue of additional songs to keep things from getting stale. For every one song that manages to claw its way up to the rarefied heights of seasonal standard, there’s a few HUNDRED more songs that fell by the wayside. Obviously, the majority of them totally deserve their fate: crappy novelty jingles and bad love songs with a token holiday reference thrown in and the fifty thousand different attempt to recreate “The Christmas Song” and blah blah blah. But even after sweeping all those aside, there’s still a sizable stack of Christmas tunes where I feel like I’m the only person in the world who even knows about them them. Except NOT ANYMORE, cos I’m about to inflict ‘em on all of you!
I should point out, however, that I’ve made a point of amending the title on this blog. The previous ones explicitly declared the ten songs within to be songs I wanted to become more popular, songs I though really had a shot at becoming standards if only they got more play in the wider world. While I’m not saying I WOULDN’T like any of these to become more popular, this time around the ten selections are a bit more… esoteric. There’s a few here that I freely admit to being a too odd for some people, and some others that are probably so same-y as to be forgettable. There’s at least one song here that I’ll absolutely own up to only including because of an especially warped bit of personal nostalgia, even I don’t think it’s all that great. The important thing, though, is that you’ve almost certainly not heard most of them before. THAT'S what these blogs are all about: introducing you to stuff you don't recognize. I’m not necessarily trying to unearth lost classics or anything, just some competent, unfamiliar Christmas tunes that you haven’t had a chance to get sick of yet. Seriously, if the alternative is hearing “Santa Baby” for the 7,234,890th time, ANY of the following ten songs should be welcome. I’m just trying to give ya’ll a way out, here.
“Christmas Time (is here again)” – The Beatles
How have I gone so long without mentioning this? It’s a Christmas song, and it’s by The Beatles! What could be more up my alley? If you don’t recognize this song, that’s hardly surprising, because The Beatles never “really” made any Christmas albums. What they DID make were a series of flexi disc singles sent out to their fanclub, most of which were filled up with rambling improvised spoken greetings rather than anything musical. The psychedelic years of ’66 and ’67 were a lot weirder, however, and the annual present to the fanclub morphed into an elaborate sound collage of trippy skits and sound bites with actual pre-written scripts and everything! The 1967 record is probably the high water mark, since they even went so far as to write a real, honest to goodness, original SONG to go with it: “Christmas Time (is here again)”. Now, by Beatles standards, this song is pretty simplistic. Heck, most of the lyrics are just the title repeated over and over. Nevertheless, the song is dripping with the same child-like enthusiasm that informed much of their psychedelic period, which you can credit either to the liberation of not being a touring act anymore OR to more pharmaceutical causes depending on how charitable you feel. Either way, the colorful whimsy of British Psychedelic Pop fits surprisingly well with the rigidly-enforced merriment of Christmas, and I’m sad there aren't more examples of the two cross-pollinating. Simple or not, “Christmas Time (is here again)” is a fun singalong I really wish more people would dig up for mass singalong situations. Like, this is exactly the kind of tune that would have worked great in a Muppets holiday special, as the climax some big long medley of carols. And if nothing else, I really REALLY wish more oldies stations knew this thing existed to pad out their holiday roster. There’s only so many times you can play “Wonderful Christmastime” and “Happy Xmas (war is over)” after all. Admittedly, the song was, and in certain respects still IS, one of the hardest Beatles songs to track down. The most commonly available version was included as a B-side to “Free As A Bird,” and that version is fairly heavily re-edited from the fanclub release. Still, I stand by wanting it to get more recognition. This obscure, forgotten band needs all the signal boosting it can get, after all.
“Everyone’s A Kid At Christmas” – Stevie Wonder
Speaking of songs I wish oldies stations knew about, how had I never even heard of this before last year? I mean, I know HOW I’d never heard of it, this little forgotten oddity was barely released. It was left off of Wonder’s 1967 Someday at Christmas album and only made it into circulation as a bonus track on reissues and a rarity to spice up multi-artist compilations. And while the first thing hearing “Christmas” and “Stevie Wonder” together will bring to mind is and always shall be the classic “What Christmas Means To Me,” I think this song still deserves a lot more play than it gets. The observation that holiday nostalgia brings out the child in all of us isn’t new or original; in fact, the only reason I stumbled onto this song was because I was trying to look up info on the similarly named “Everyone’s A CHILD At Christmas” by Gene Autry. (As a matter of fact, the opening lines of both these songs are similar to the point of being suspicious). This cheerful, exuberant ditty is the work of the Motown machine working at its absolute finest, a time when even a thoroughly average outtake could still sound more finely-crafted and professional that some artists’ entire discographies. Motown isn't my favorite by any stretch, but the older I get, the more respect I have for the frickin’ SYMPHONIES they could cram into every three-minute single. Again, the point of this list isn’t necessarily to insist that each of these songs ought to be fully-fledged holiday standards, but I really do think “Everyone’s A Kid At Christmas” deserved to become more of a staple of Oldies radio around December. I really think we could have afforded to sacrifice a FEW plays of “Snoopy’s Christmas” in order to make room for this.
“Catching Snowflakes On Your Tongue” – Mannheim Steamroller
On last year’s list, I reversed a previous decision to not include instrumental tracks, which obviously meant one of Mannheim Steamroller’s token original songs would be included. At the time, it was a bit of a toss up whether “Traditions of Christmas” or “Catching Snowflakes On Your Tongue” would make the list. I eventually went with “Traditions of Christmas” …and immediately regretted it, so “Catching Snowflakes on Your Tongue” was pretty much guaranteed a spot on this year’s list. I’ve said before that the difference between an original Mannheim Steamroller Christmas song and any other Steamroller song is mostly just the title and the presence of some jingle bells, and that largely holds true here. However, I do think there’s a case to be made that “Catching Snowflakes” manages to evoke the imagery of its title better than a lot of the other songs Chip Davis has attempted to repackage as being holiday fodder. The song has a stuttery, Electro-Pop vibe to it that makes me constantly forget that most of the instrumentation is actually flutes and plucked harps (yes, there are still drum machines and synth swoops, but it sounds way more sequenced than it really is). The end result is at once shivery and floaty, cool yet playful, exactly like what playing out in the snow OUGHT to sound like. This is another song where I can’t in any seriousness say it should be more popular than it is, or that other artists should cover it, but I nevertheless say it’s a good choice for adding variety to any Christmas playlist that’s getting a little too familiar. That, or a local news show that wants some special, holiday-centric theme music. Seriously, “Catching Snowflake On Your Tongue” sounds EXACTLY like the 6 O’clock News at The North Poll.
MORE New Age/Contemporary Instrumental/Synthesizer Orgy music that I already gave a shout out to last year! Teja Bell’s New Spirit of Christmas is one of the many, many, MANY albums to come out in the wake of Mannheim Steamroller’s success, and when I opened up the “instrumentals with only a tangential connection to Christmas” floodgates last time, that album’s kinda sorta title track slipped in as well. And as with the previous entry, I’ve since come to think I made the wrong choice back then, so I’ll be trying to rectify that now. “Tree of Life” only really has the vague “well, trees are a Christmas thing” connection to the holiday as far as the title goes, but it totally SOUNDS like a Christmas song. Between the fifty layers of Casio keyboards laying an ethereal, music box-esque foundation and the airy electric guitar on top, “Tree of Life” sounds like a quiet, snowy night. The calm before the kids come running out to play during “Catching Snowflakes On Your Tongue,” perhaps? This is the perfect sort of song to play on one of those giant walk/ride-through Christmas light displays when you reach the inevitable classy, snowy section. You know, the stretch where the lights are just white instead of colored and it’s just those long icicle string things and maybe a few big snowflakes; the part that always bores the kids. If that’s too esoteric a description for you, then just imagine that one poignant scene in most Christmas special where somebody looks out at Christmas Eve night and talks about the true meaning of whatever. “Tree of Life” is the soundtrack to that scene. It’s not for people with a low tolerance for ethereal, wooshing keyboards, but if you like ambient soundscapes or hotel spa music, “Tree of Life” is some good holiday mood music.
“An Old-Fashioned Christmas” – Frank Sinatra
Okay, this song right here is why I amended the title to this blog. Also, I need to specify right away that this is NOT one of the many other songs with a similar title, and there are quite a few. In particular, the Carpenters’ song of the same name is probably better than this Sinatra tune by every conceivable metric. While sappy and corny (it’s a Carpenters song, for crying out loud), it’s lush and intricately orchestrated and full of immaculate harmonies and just generally happy. The Sinatra song, on the other hand, is a somewhat moody and downbeat Jazz ballad with minimal harmonies and a deliberate lack of energy. It’s basically another take on the bittersweet “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” formula but with way more of the bitter and not enough sweet to balance it out. It mostly just mopes about how much it sucks to be stuck in New York City instead of back home for the holidays. I can appreciate the occasional dash of a minor key in my holiday playlist (hello “Coventry Carol”) but generally speaking, my tolerance for songs about getting depressed over the holidays is pretty low (hello “Same Old Lang Syne”)… which makes it a bit odd that I have a real soft spot for “An Old-Fashioned Christmas.” It'll make a bit more sense when you realize I stumbled across this song while I was living in DC, a.k.a. The Worst Years Of My Life. I always managed to avoid being stuck in the city on the 25th itself, but you’d better believe it was a major drag on my Christmas spirit having to spend ANY of the holiday season in a place that was actively sucking so much life out of me. Thus, this frumpy song about a guy hating the city he was in REALLY resonated with me: a frumpy guy who hated the city he was in. I still can’t really recommend “An Old-Fashioned Christmas” to general audiences, since it really does drag too much, but I also can’t help but have a real soft spot for it. I feel a sense of solidarity with this song, like we understand each other. And hey, if you’re morbidly curious what a Christmas Film Noir would be like, this would ABSOLUTELY be the theme, right here.
“Christmas Is The Day” – The Free Design
The Free Design were one of those bands who were too clever for their own good. The Dedrick siblings recorded seven albums between the late 60s and early 70s, drawing comparisons to the Folk of Peter, Paul & Mary, the Sunshine Pop of The Association or The Mamas & The Papas, and even the Baroque Pop of The Left Banke or mid-period Beach Boys. But the thing is, all those artists had hits. The Free Design, on the other hand, managed only one minor not-quite-hit before going to a “career” of well-reviewed flops that were only rediscovered by record geeks decades later. They had an immaculate sense of harmony and arrangement, but their songs are so densely packed with neat little musical touches that they actually end up sort of burying themselves in their own quirkiness. Honestly, rather than The Association or The Mamas & The Papas, I think The Free Design sounded the closest to those post-Psychedelic/pre-Prog Canterbury scene bands, except with better singing in the place of the jamming. So, of course, on the rare occasions anybody tapped The Free Design to record Christmas songs (and it was the United States Air Force, of all things), ringleader Chris Dedrick couldn’t settle for covering any familiar standards, he had to write brand new tunes of his own. There’s no chance any of these things becoming standards of their own right, they’re waaaay too quirky and weird, but I still really like “Christmas Is The Day” as a nice change of pace. It’s got all the beautiful harmonies of an especially churchy Christmas hymn, except if liturgical choral music somehow ran on jazz chords. Seriously, I’ve heard this song plenty of times over the years and I STILL get a bit lost during the bridge, the chord changes and counter harmonies are just that unusual. And I mean that in a good way. If you’re enough of a music geek to wonder what a Christmas song by Kevin Ayers would be like if it both existed and was covered by an Elevator Music band, here it is. Again, I’m sure there’s not very many of those people out there, but at least for ME “Christmas Is The Day” is a great bit of added variety on my playlists.
“My Christmas Tree” – The Going Thing
Oh man, if you thought The Free Design was an obscure choice, just get a load of The Going Thing. Not so much a band as a front for studio pros Tom and John Bahler, who also did a lot of work for luminaries like The Partridge Family, The Going Thing existed to record commercial jingles and free giveaways for Ford. In particular, the did a Christmas album in 1968 that was exclusively a present for workers at Ford plants, never meant for public distribution at all. Like, nearly the entire first side isn’t even music but a speech but some CEO about company morale or whatever. I’ve certainly never seen a physical copy, the only way I know about this thing is because a rip of it was posted on WFMU’s website. And man, that’s too bad, because this is one of the most gloriously kitschy Christmas albums you’ll ever hear. If some music nerd tried to make a satirical parody of Christmas music as commercialized advertising jingles, he’d never be able to ironically strike the same balance of elevator music and radio bumpers that the Bahler brothers hit with complete sincerity here, and I one hundred percent consider that a good thing. Most of Christmas 1968 With The Going Thing is just slicked up renditions of standards like “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” and “The Christmas Song” (plus a straight choral version of “Silent Night” for the token classy moment) but there’s also a single original composition: “My Christmas Tree.” The packaging on the album is so lackluster that I can’t tell if the Bahlers actually wrote “My Christmas Tree” themselves, but I’ve never encountered another version anywhere else, so I’m assuming it was custom written for this. “My Christmas Tree” is one of those songs probably nobody out there would care about anywhere as much as I do: a weird fusion of Folk Rock melody and slick bossa nova beat with an out of nowhere medieval-sounding French horn break. That last part in particular pretty much ruins any chance “My Christmas Tree” ever would have had at making it into the broader holiday music roster, assuming there was ever a place for a lounge cover of The Hollies’ “Bus Stop” only about Christmas stuff in the first place. But that’s just another part of why I like this one. So much holiday music gets blasted for being the same old thing, I can’t help but take notice of a song like “My Christmas Tree” that’s such a stylistic detour. Again, this is another great way to break up a monotonous playlist with something unfamiliar.
“It’s Christmas Time Again” – Johnny Mathis
Speaking of holiday music getting blasted for being the same old thing, here’s a big orchestral ballad sung by Johnny Mathis. Actually, while I’ve specifically mentioned the Mathis version because it’s the one I’m most familiar with, “It’s Christmas Time Again” is one of those songs I wish more people did different versions of. The only other versions I know of is the ‘50s original by Peggy Lee, and that’s even more of a ballad than Mathis’ version, and an only SLIGHTLY more uptempo Bing Crosby cover. Maybe I’m crazy, but I feel like “It’s Christmas Time Again” would work really well in a more lively, up-tempo arrangement. The melody just seems very versatile to me, and I feel like the song could have been adapted to any number of styles and genres if anybody had bothered. I could see this tune working as a mid-tempo Pop Rocker, a laid-back Country tune, a children’s choir showcase, and plenty more over-used musical tropes. As I’ve said before, I’m a firm believer that Christmas’s musical clichés wouldn’t be half as annoying as they are to people if only we didn’t apply them to the same two dozen songs over and over and over ad nauseam. “It’s Christmas Time Again” strikes me as just adaptable enough to serve as one of those necessary bits of added variety. I won’t even try to excuse the lyrics for being yet another “list of attributes about the holiday season” song, but you can’t have everything, can you? Somebody get on covering this.
…and get on this as well, while you're at it. As things stand, “Christmas Eve” is probably the dorkiest tune on this list: a sing-along waltz with strings and choir and an old crooner in front of it all that collectively might be the single whitest song you’ll here all year. And that’s an impressive feat considering that “Christmas Eve” was written by Ray Charles. I really wish he’d recorded a version himself, because “Christmas Eve” strikes me as another song that could thrive in other forms. Aside from the potential soulful piano ballad hinted at earlier, I could see this working as a sort of acoustic Folk tune or Country ballad, I could easily imagine the likes of Mannheim Steamroller leaning into the sing-song nature of the melody and turning it into one of those ethereal lullaby showcases they like doing, and I can also absolutely see somebody leaning into the song’s Jazz foundations and playing up that aspect. Again, there’s nothing really groundbreaking about “Christmas Eve” that would make it uniquely worth rediscovering. Lyrically, it’s just another in the looooong line of holiday checklist songs, but I don’t think there’s anything specifically BAD about it either. There’s plenty of songs out there less deserving of revival, and I can’t state enough how much I think the Christmas song catalogue as a whole could benefit from a nice vigorous shaking up. Let more of the stuff that fell to bottom have a chance to rise up to the top!
“Here Comes Christmas” – The Chipmunks
Oh boy, here we go. Considering that The Chipmunks’ squeaky legacy basically started with a Christmas song, it’s a bit surprising that there aren't way more holiday tunes to their name. Then again, outside of “The Chipmunk Song,” most people remember them more for helium-fueled covers of pre-existing hits than original songs, so maybe it’s not so surprising after all. But then AGAIN, I’ve already gone on record as really enjoying their “Wonderful Day.” A blatant attempt to rehash “The Chipmunk Song?” Oh absolutely, but it's arguably a better song, and DEFINITELY one that'd be easier to cover in a non-Chipmunk context if only anybody would bother. Ranking right alongside that tune is “Here Comes Christmas,” a song spawned by the 80s Chipmunk revival and, as far as I know, only ever recorded in Chipmunk form. If any other versions exist, I couldn’t find them, and that’s a dang shame, because this song is great. The Chipmunks version might have an incredibly 80s production all over it, but at its heart this is one of those songs that wants to sound way older than it is. Between the galloping 6/8 time and folk tune melody, “Here Comes Christmas” feels like an old forgotten English carol, sort of like an Alfred Burt tune but squeakier. And that’s the main problem with this song: it’s sung by tiny woodland critters. I’m enough of a sucker for tight harmonies that I can even stomach it in chipmunk form, but I know a lot of people who just can’t stand Alvin & co.’s one and only gimmick, and I totally understand it. I really, really, REALLY wish some singers with actual human voices would rediscover “Here Comes Christmas” and record a less ear-piercing version for normal people above the age of eight to enjoy. More than anything else on this list, I’d say this song truly does deserves to be more of a thing. Just a less squeaky thing.
And that's it for another year! Man, between this and the previous blog, you'd think there just wouldn't be any obscure Christmas songs left for me to unload on anyone... and you'd be wrong. So very very wrong. I literally already have rough outlines for next year's Christmas music blogs made out of stuff I didn't mention this time around. IT NEVER ENDS!
