The 10 Greatest Christmas Songs

Dedicated followers of this page will know that I’ve already done the 10 Greatest Summer and Winter songs. Now comes the impossible challenge to do the same with Christmas.

This list could be filled with just carols, or only pop bangers, or exclusively perversely obscure choices hardly anyone has heard of. I have attempted a mix of all three, and thus many classics will not make the list, as there can be only ten.

Once again I will go in reverse order.

10. Maybe This Christmas - Ron Sexsmith
Yet again I include the most underrated songwriter, both living and possibly of all time, Ron Sexsmith.

This track is a typically understated stocking filler, which employs the Christmas trope of reconciliation, and the Christmas song trope of wondering if this Christmas will be somehow slightly better than all the others. But in Ron’s modest fashion all he’s suggesting is calling someone we may have fallen out with ‘for reasons we can’t quite recall’.

I recommend listening to the original first, but there’s also a nice live home version here.

9. Child’s Christmas in Wales - John Cale
This is from Cale’s masterpiece, Paris 1919, and is named after Dylan Thomas’s famous work, though this being Mr Cale, the lyrics only obliquely refer to the original. There’s also a reference to another Thomas piece, Ballad Of The Long-Legged Bait.

This is the only track I shall include containing the lyrics ‘Sebastopol Adrianapolis’. Highbrow yet Christmassy.

8. Xmas - Jesse Malin
A melancholy yet oddly comforting track from Jesse Malin’s excellent album, The Fine Art of Self Destruction (2002). One of those records I have listened to many times, whilst never feeling the need to move on to any of his other work. I sensed this was the peak. This one is about missing your ex at Christmas, and alludes to Joni Mitchell’s ‘River’ with the lyric ‘I made my baby cry’. I already included ‘River’ in my top 10 winter songs, which is the only reason it misses out here.

7. It’s Clichéd to Be Cynical At Christmas - Half Man Half Biscuit
It wouldn’t be Christmas without Half Man Half Biscuit. The Biscuit boys skewer the excess of irony that characterised their era (the song is from 2000). It now strikes me that being cynical at Christmas, and the defiant opposition to that stance, are both relics from a time when Christmas assumed a cultural ubiquity we have now lost.

The preoccupations of Generation X now seem like luxuries as we fight for the very survival of Christmas, and indeed of our culture. But HMHB were instinctively on the right side of the debate.

6. Lonely This Christmas - Mud
I’m not totally sure why I included this. I like the vocal and the melancholy theme. And I’m no stranger to brutal Christmas solitude. Though in my case I deliberately chose it. If there was a song called ‘Introvert’s Christmas’, I would probably include that instead.

This is a cut above most Christmas songs, and also contains a ridiculous talking section, at which point you realise you’re not listening to Elvis, but some lads from Surrey. I also enjoyed last year’s parody ‘Freezing This Christmas’ by Sir Starmer and the Granny Harmers. It’s probably a travesty that I’ve included this and left out Wham!, East 17, Darlene Love, and billions of others. But what can I say? I’m into loneliness.

5. I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday - Wizzard
I include this as one of only two obvious rock/pop Christmas bangers. I have always preferred it to Slade’s ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’, which it sits alongside in my mind. I have a distant memory of actually being happy hearing this song, and I think it still stands up today (the song, not the happiness). Roy Wood is always excellent (‘Blackberry Way’ is a favourite), and I’ve just found out we share a birthday.

4. It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas - Bing Crosby
This Christmas classic was written in 1951 by Meredith Willson, and was first recorded by Perry Como. But to me Bing nails the definitive version. It transports the listener to the innocence of 1950s America, which the libs would tell us was all secret alcoholism and sexual repression, but which I suspect was the peak of Western civilisation.

Take a look in the five and ten, glistening once again
With candy canes and silver lanes aglow

I wonder if they knew what they had.

3. All I Want for Christmas Is You - Mariah Carey
It’s not often you get to hear a song released for the first time and instantly know you are hearing a classic. I was just about to turn 13 when this came out, so it’s no surprise I associate it with a certain emergent Sehnsucht. I think of exchanging Christmas cards with classmates, which involved actually speaking to girls. It was exciting, yet now seems impossibly quaint. The song’s feeling of longing, combined with an innocence that remains yet intact, could not be a more apposite match for my experience at the time of release. And of course we were also in the peak of the American empire. True, we were forced to accept their cultural exports. But some of those exports were delicious.

2. Walking In The Air - Peter Auty
If magic is real, it is contained within this song. Hearing and watching this as a child, as part of the seminal 1982 animated film The Snowman, as Christmas approached, was a transcendent, nay, supernatural experience. Even listening back now, it is mesmerising. Written by Howard Blake, the arrangement is stunning, with many flourishes that emerge the more one listens, such as the syncopation after the first verse, or the unexpected appearance of a muted trumpet.

This version, the original and best, is sung by Peter Auty, whose haunting vocal simply cannot be topped. Most people think it was sung by Aled Jones, but they are horribly mistaken. They brought him in later for a cover version on a Toys R Us campaign, and the rumour was always that this was because Auty’s voice had broken. However, Auty claims this isn’t true, and he was simply not asked. Auty was not even credited on the original, and this injustice has bothered me for a long time. The real ones know, Peter.

1. In the Bleak Midwinter - Gustav Holst
Of course, the real meaning of Christmas is the birth of Jesus Christ. And, as I said, one could fill a much longer list than this with carols alone. I have attempted to get around that problem by including only one carol, but putting it at the very top. I could easily have included ‘Away in a Manger’, ‘Once in Royal David's City’, or ‘We Three Kings’. There is scarcely a hymn or carol I don’t love.

But I have gone for ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’, specifically the Holst version. Some, including my beloved mother, prefer the version by Harold Darke. For me, Hoslt cannot be beaten, partly because it appears at the end of one of my favourite films, The Most Reluctant Convert, about C.S. Lewis’s journey from atheism to Christianity. The final verse may be the most moving section of any carol.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

Honourable Mentions
Obviously this list leaves out an absurd number of incredible Christmas songs. It is utterly criminal that it does not feature Darlene Love’s ‘Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)’. There’s nothing by The Ronettes. Paul McCartney (‘Wonderful Christmastime’) and John Lennon (‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over)’) both miss out. As do the Beach Boys with ‘Little Saint Nick’.

Wham! should clearly be in there. As should East 17, and frankly Cliff Richard’s ‘Mistletoe and Wine’ should feature. I even like ‘Saviour’s Day’. ‘Christmas Wrapping’ by the Waitresses simply must be on the list. The Spice Girls’ ‘2 Become 1’ just missed out. ‘White Christmas’ isn’t even in there. Or ‘Silent Night’! Madness.

But it cannot be changed now. Just like those Christmases of yore, we cannot go back. Look to the future now, it’s only just begun.

Happy Christmas,
Nick

P.S. If I’ve done it right, you should be able to listen to the full playlist on Spotify here.