We all have our own favourite seasonal songs. Mine work for a bleak midwinter ? and for a profound, optimistic one
I've made it a rule that I can only start playing my favourite Christmas songs after 5 December, even if the supermarket ads have already been anticipating Christmas Day for weeks. That will give me about three and a half weeks before it begins to seem wrong to be playing these songs, written for, about, because of, Christmas, whether that is Christmas as a deeply contemplative religious celebration, a nonstop party for most of the senses, a time for unusual family togetherness, a trip down memory lane, an orgy of shopping, a stressful frenzy of sentimentality, or something that will end, for better or worse, in tears.
At Christmas, we live inside a musical made up of these songs, and we can't escape it, and nor do we want to, especially if the soundtrack consists of music sung by Eartha Kitt, the Kinks, Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, Jewel, Johnny Cash, Clarence Carter, the Smashing Pumpkins, Ray Charles, the Temptations, Bright Eyes, the Pretenders or Chris Isaak, as opposed to Glee, Cliff, the Priests, Annie Lennox, Dido, John Denver, Wham! or Susan Boyle. Even at this time of the year, when you're surrounded by fun, frivolity, superstition, arguments, turkey and greed, there's good and bad taste. It might be because of a certain seasonal softening of the heart and head, but I'm pretty partial to the Christmases of Andy Williams and the Partridge Family, and can easily swing from Sonny Boy Williamson to Olivia Newton-John. All pop life, trivial and/or blissful, exists in extreme form inside the Christmas song.
Many of these songs are simply about how Christmas is ultimately about songs, and singing, and voices. They explain the traditions, many of which they've helped invent and maintain; they mock them, love them, resist them and continually enhance them. They're cloying, profound, beautiful or corny, whether from the 16th century, and the first song I ever learnt to sing ? "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" ? or from the 1970s ? Donny Hathaway's "This Christmas", John and Yoko's "Happy Xmas (War is Over)".
By 5 December, after weeks of anticipation about the moment when I'll be able to turn to my Christmas collection and play those songs that have been somehow asleep all year, the time has come. It's as though the songs are about to wake up after a dream they've all been having, about how special and weird Christmas is, and they're going to bring some of that dreaming with them. They'll burst into life and revel in the very time of the year they were written to represent, and many of them are going to be everywhere, and some of them are really going to get on our nerves, even sicken us with their trite commercial calculation. They'll be played so many times to make up for the fact they've not been heard for a while and can only be played for a few intense days before they're packed off again.
On the big day ? the day I start to play my Christmas songs ? I spend a little time working out what I will begin with. What kind of year has it been, what kind of mood am I in? Will it be the Reverend JM Gates asking "Will the Coffin Be Your Santa Claus?", the Staple Singers' "Who Took the Merry Out of Christmas", Jimmy Witherspoon's "How I Hate to See Xmas Come Around", Merle Haggard's "If We Make it Through December", Ramsey Lewis's "Here Comes Santa Claus", the Carpenters' "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas", James Brown's "Let's Make Christmas Mean Something This Year" or XTC's "Thanks For Christmas"?
Should I take a song, one of the hokey classics you'll hear 10 times a day this time of year, and trace its history ? because one Christmas song can explain so much about pop? "Jingle Bells", from 1857, was a novelty sleighing song written for Thanksgiving, which took time, and new technology, to become popular. It was recorded by the Haydn Quartet in 1905, Benny Goodman in 1935, and Les Paul multitracked it in 1951. There was also a barking dog Danish novelty version, plus covers by Dean Martin, Perry Como, Booker T & the MG's, the Ventures, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Boney M, James Taylor, Yello (my favourite!), Diana Krall (my new favourite!) and the Puppini Sisters. You could do the same with "Silent Night" ? the Supremes, Elvis, Christina Aguilera ? although I often end playing Sister Rosetta Tharpe's again and again, because some people sing Christmas songs as if we should feel sorry for them and some sing them as if they're a way to locate truth and something transcendent.
What about holidaying in the 50s (Elvis's "Blue Christmas", Bobby Helms's "Jingle Bell Rock", Jimmy Boyd's "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus", Harry Belafonte's "Mary's Boy Child") or the 60s (Otis Redding's "Merry Christmas Baby", the Beach Boys' "Little Saint Nick", Stevie Wonder's "Someday At Christmas")? Check how Bruce Springsteen took "Santa Claus is Coming to Town", initially dismissed as a kids' song, from the Jackson 5, who took it from Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, who took it from Frank Sinatra. And did I mention the 70s and "Merry Christmas, Darling"? Because it isn't Christmas without the Carpenters. Then again, it isn't Christmas in my house without the Cocteau Twins somewhere in space singing "Frosty the Snowman" and "Winter Wonderland".
The temptation for my first Christmas song of the year has recently been to revert to devout minimalists, Low, a Bing and Brenda Lee for the MP3 generation, with their "Just Like Christmas", which gracefully prepares you for the bleak midwinter pain and sadness to come as well as the possible pleasure. All that expectation and insane optimism, and then it's gone, and maybe Christmas was all you hoped for, and you want it again, but have to wait, or maybe it was disappointing, even desolate, and it might be your last. You just can't take Christmas any more.
On the other side of the tree, another form of decoration altogether, I toyed with starting out with Mariah Carey's new album, Merry Christmas II You, which has her standing up for what she wants, the eternal happy Christmas, with such spectacular snowy elan, such a nutty, moving arrangement of rapture, joy, spirit, bells and kitsch, you might believe she is Santa Claus's daughter. Her mother, in that case, even if Barbra Streisand ended up adopting her, might be the magnificent, idiosyncratic queen of gospel, Mahalia Jackson ? and this year I ultimately decided to begin with Jackson's "Christmas Comes to Us All Once a Year". I chose that one because, well, what she says and sings is absolutely right, and it makes me feel that she's on to something very special, spotting and celebrating something that's blatantly obvious as though it's a wonderful, ghostly secret. Mahalia, as with the best Christmas singers, as with the best art, turns the familiar into the strange, and the strange into the familiar. From Mahalia to Low, and so on, until it's all over once more.
As you read this, it's time to work out what the last Christmas song I play will be before time's up ? Rosemary Clooney's "Suzy Snowflake", Patti Smith's "We Three Kings", Canned Heat's "Christmas Blues", Willie Nelson's "Please Come Home for Christmas" ? because we slip through life from one Christmas to the next, innocence piling up next to loss, fantasy crashing against reality, and we can take these deviant, magical songs with us, but only at this time of the year.
These Christmas songs are for those who've always lived as though Phil Spector's A Christmas Gift For You is the only Christmas album to live with, because Spector used the Christmas song as an excuse to experiment with how fantastic the pop song could be, all of which Simon Cowell should hear to understand how he has ruined Christmas.
Ehrinn Cummings Sienna Miller Cindy Taylor Halle Berry Catherine Bell
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