NOTES ON CHRISTMAS SONGS
Are the heartfelt festive songs all true - or do they sit on a throne of lies?
“You’ll be singing them over and over and over again… every December they get in our heads…” sang Geraldine McQueen, joyful alter ego of Peter Kay. And he/she was entirely correct. I’ve now spent three solid days with Dolly Parton’s version of Go Tell it on the Mountain trapped in my brain, and it’s not even her best (which is obviously Hard Candy Christmas). Worse, for a few hours last week, I was stuck in a mental lift with Bloody Wonderful bloody Christmas bloody Time, one of my least favourite songs, which I’m convinced bloody McCartney thought up on the loo and turned into a toxic musical gas purely for laughs.
Plus, my halfhearted attempt to play Whamageddon ended at Preston station Cafe in the first week of December, while I ordered a tuna baguette, and that grimly familiar opening note floated over commuters’ heads.
I can’t even enjoy Fairytale of New York any more, because it’s now an immovable shibboleth that it’s ‘the greatest Christmas song of all time’ (It isn’t, ‘Baby Please Come Home’ by Darlene Love is, followed by ‘Ain’t No Chimneys in the Projects’ by Sharon Jones and the Dapp Kings). And I heard it in Oxfam the other day and they left in the offending word, which sent me on a philosophical mind journey into what constitutes offence. (If none of the the browsing shoppers looked up, and weren’t offended because they weren’t listening or didn’t care, is it still offensive? Is its very journey through the air offensive, or is a questionable word only offensive when someone in the vicinity is actively offended?).
Basically, I’m not feeling the love I used to have for the Christmas classics, largely because they’ve been played to death in every shop since October and Radio 2 - my driving station of choice because that’s the age I am, and I can’t cope with news all the time - is so obsessed with Christmas songs, they’d play Ed Sheeran sipping from a red Starbucks cup if they could. “That was Sophie Ellis-Bextor, biting into a mince pie.”
The threadbare standards are old, mendacious, tiresome, and full of gloopy, sentimental crap that makes people feel bad about their own non-snowy, non-sleigh-bell-ringing, non-madly in love Christmas. Or so I’ve begun to believe. So, in the spirit of festive science, let’s find out if I’m right. Are the Christmas songs still true - or are they sitting on a musical throne of lies?
SCIENTIFIC NOTE: I am not including Slade because hate it as you might, that song IS Christmas, and bears no further analysis. An equal amnesty applies to The Darkness (brilliant and hilarious), Phil Spector’s A Christmas Gift for You, as, despite being a murderer, he made a bloody good festive record, and Brenda Lee’s Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree, because I quite like it. As for Mariah’s annual glittery reindeer poop, that’s just shrieking in a santa outfit.
Finally, Joni Mitchell’s River is not a Christmas song, despite what sad-eyed middle-aged men would have you believe. And, also, if the song is set in New York, she DOES have a river, it’s called The Hudson, and it’s hard to miss.
1 LAST CHRISTMAS
Last Christmas I gave you my heart
But the very next day you gave it away
This year, to save me from tears
I'll give it to someone special
A very angry song (note, ‘You’ll never fool me again’ and general pissed-off chuntering throughout). George carefully doesn’t state whether the gift of his heart was welcome, or whether he was just standing outside his beloved’s house like John Cusack in Say Anything, holding up his heart instead of a ghetto blaster, however unwelcome a sight that may have been.
If indeed it was given away ‘the very next day,’ that doesn’t suggest the recipient thought it was much of a gift, and considered it on a par with Yardley’s festive bath salts donated to the Hospice Shop in a bag of old Top Shop stuff. So while George has taken a full year to grasp that it wasn’t welcome, he’s now wielding the empty and rather pass-agg threat that he’ll ‘give it to someone special’. As opposed to the un-special git he gifted it to last year- who didn’t even ask for it in the first place.
Is it a good Christmas song? No. Great tune, beautifully sung but less festive than a squashed mince pie at a bus stop.
2 WONDERFUL CHRISTMAS TIME
The mood is right
The spirit’s up
We're here tonight
And that's enough
‘The mood is right.’ That’s the kind of thing they used to say on Cinzano adverts, featuring Lorraine Chase and Nigel Havers, while she kicked off a stiletto in slow motion in front of a roaring fire. It’s the sort of line Rod Stewart would croon to a 23 year old Swedish model in damp cheesecloth. Also, it doesn’t mean anything.
“The spirit’s up.” I imagine Macca was poking gently at a chin spot, half-thinking about what to have for tea when he came up with that one. He might as well have added ‘will this do?” onto the end. Then it’s a lot of ‘woooo… wooooo’ and the kid’s choir takes over. My infallible rule of Christmas: If you have to include a children’s choir in your song, you’ve failed. (With the exception of The Darkness. And actual carols.)
Is it a good Christmas song? It’s a terrible song, Christmas or otherwise. McCartney wrote Maybe I’m Amazed, Blackbird, Hey Jude and Yesterday. And then he goes and spoils it all by writing something stupid like this.
3 STEP INTO CHRISTMAS
Welcome to my Christmas song
I'd like to thank you for the year
So I'm sending you this Christmas card
To say it's nice to have you here
I'd like to sing about all the things
Your eyes and mind can see
So hop aboard the turntable
Oh step into Christmas with me
Full disclosure: I love Elton. Nothing makes me happier than Bennie and the Jets, or Tiny Dancer. He’s a musical genius, Bernie Taupin is a lyrical genius, it’s all good. But let’s be honest, though a bangingly jolly tune goes a long way, one look at these random and unrelated words and it all falls apart. It’s hopelessly illogical - he’s sending someone a Christmas card when they’re already here. “All the things your eyes and mind can see”? That could be anything. Buses. Extra-Sensitive toothpaste. A brief, melancholic memory of being bullied at school. Elton cannot possibly sing about all of them. “Hop aboard the turntable” suggests you already own and are playing the record he’s singing on, which is quite a meta concept.
Is it a good Christmas song? It’s silly enough to be festive, but let down by a hopeless lack of rationality and terrible lyrics.
4 A FAIRYTALE OF NEW YORK
It was Christmas Eve babe
In the drunk tank
An old man said to me, won't see another one
And then he sang a song
The Rare Old Mountain Dew
I turned my face away
And dreamed about you
Great lyrics. Great song. Perfect duet, beautifully done. Logically it all hangs together, and its melancholy story of a couple who once loved, destroyed by drugs, alcohol and bitterness yet still bound together, is timeless and tragic. It also manages to cram in two references to sad Irish songs, bells and a choir, while remaining fundamentally a meticulous police statement. Can’t fault it - apart from That Word. But if it was reported speech, the song is only quoting what was said by the characters. So the onus is not on them to stop singing, but on us to stop singing along.
Is it a good Christmas song? Yes. Absolutely. I just wish it hadn’t been played to death.
5 SANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO TOWN
You better watch out
You better not cry
You better not pout
I'm telling you why
Santa Claus is coming to town
He's making a list
He's checking it twice
He's gonna find out who's naughty or nice
Santa Claus is coming to town
Memorably sung in Elf to get Santa’s sleigh off the ground via the power of ‘Christmas spirit’, on first glance, this seems an excellent festive song. But looking more closely - it’s demanding good behaviour because Santa Claus is coming to (your, presumably) town. This suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of what Santa Claus already knows. Generally, he lives at the North Pole, and works remotely, from lists. This implies he has all the admin staff he needs to check up on the behaviour of the world’s children, without actual on-site visits. The song, however, suggests that like an Ofsted inspector, Santa will only notice poor local behaviour when he’s nearby. ‘Checking it twice’ also implies that his powers are waning, and he’s less sure about his own perceptions of what constitutes naughty and nice.
None of this is reassuring on the topic of Santa’s timeless transcendence, and sadly, reduces him to the status of an ageing traffic warden.
Is it a good Christmas song? Yes. Is it good PR for Santa? No. Not at all.
Happy Christmas! Thank you so much for reading Decommissioned this year, and see you in January. Every like, comment and share is a joy. x
This is great. Knowledgeable, , insightful and entertaining. As always. Also, it's not often you get a mention of 'Ain't No Chimeneys In The Projects' by Sharon Jones and The Dapp Kings.