I admit it, I'm a sucker for Christmastime. It strikes many people as odd, considering that the other eleven months of the year I'm an incredible cynic. Still, the holiday season is absolutely my favorite time of year, and I'm probably the cheesiest person I know when it comes to the festive stuff. Although I'm not at all the person who starts listening to Christmas music before (American) Thanksgiving, I'm all about the holiday tunes once December rolls around.
Below is a list of five of my favorite Christmas songs. Honestly, though, this list could easily be ten times as long, so it was very hard to just choose five. In fact, I feel kind of Scrooge-like for being so stingy with the list in the first place.
5. "Last Christmas" by Wham! Yes, you have to put an exclamation point after "Wham", because that's actually part of the name. This song is pure 80s cheese, and yet it's a true classic to me when it comes to Christmas. There is hardly a finer modern pop holiday classic than this tune, all about a person with a broken heart who somehow manages to sound quite happy. Like every other holiday song, it has been remade many times, with only the version by Jimmy Eat World being a close second in my opinion.
4. "Christmastime is here" by Vince Guaraldi. Who would've thought that a jazz song would be such a perfect Christmas tune? Written for the classic Peanuts Christmas special, there aren't many versions of this song that I don't like, including the original, which is simply a piano, drums (played with brushes, not sticks), and children's choir. Surprisingly melancholy despite it's joyful lyrics, this is the song I listen to as I sit next to the fire with a glass of scotch. On Christmas night, after the gifts are open and you're staring at the tree lights in the darkness, this is the perfect holiday song to wind down with as the season comes to a close.
3. "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" by Frank Sinatra. Another song that is one of my favorites no matter who is singing it, but Frank will always get the nod. How can you resist Ol' Blue Eyes managing to cheer you up despite what was originally written as a tragic lament about feeling out of place and getting older? It's no coincidence that most of the songs on this list are slow ballads, and that's because there's no better time to relax than The Holidays. If Frank can't help you unwind, there's no hope for you at all, Ebeneezer. Close runner up? "Mistletoe and Holly", also by Frank.
2. "Same Auld Lang Syne" By Dan Fogelberg. Technically not a Christmas song, but it's hard to listen to it any other time of year. A sad song about a man running into a former love on Christmas Eve, this song is the kind that makes you reflect upon an entire decade in under five minutes. It's the kind of song that makes you think about "the one that got away", only to realize that it's probably good it wound up that way. When he sings at the end "Just for a moment, I was back in school...and felt that old, familiar pain", you'll know exactly what that feeling is. You'd be crazy never to have felt it. Should auld acquaintance be forgot, indeed.
1. "The Christmas Song" by Nat King Cole. This is not only another example of a slow, quiet song being strangely uplifting, it's probably the one by which all others should be judged. Written by the legendary Mel Torme, the Nat King Cole version will always outshine any other version before or since. The popular Cole version you hear every year was actually his fourth take on it, in 1961, having already made it popular in the 40s. Torme (and his co-writer, Bob Wells) actually wrote the song during a brutally hot summer, dreaming of cooler weather. Since then, it has become the most recorded Christmas song in history. It may have been said many times, many ways, but it has never been said quite as well.
Perhaps one of the finest things about Holiday music is that it is only played for roughly six weeks every year. Yet the sounds of the season manage to stay with us for our entire lives, with words and music we never seem to forget. Call me sentimental, but I love that time of year, and am always happy to hear some of my favorite holiday music played on the radio. Of course, that doesn't mean you'll find me anywhere near a mall in the month of December. Holiday music I like. Holiday shoppers? Not so much.
Got a favorite Christmas song? I want to know. It's your turn to tell me all about it.
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