In Defence of the Christmas Song

A few weeks ago, I went off on one about Christmas songs. Specifically, Christmas songs being played far too early in the year. Shops, cafes, restaurants, all piping out obligatory festive cheer while the leaves were still clinging on to the trees and autumn had not even packed its bags yet. I was a grumpy old Stu about it, no doubt about that. Read it, you’ll get the feel for my mood at the time. 

However, I do not want anyone to think that I hate Christmas or Christmas songs. I really do not. I’m a festive little soul, really…

The truth is that I actually love Christmas, and I love a good Christmas song or carol just as much as the next person. I just like them at the right time, and not when I am still adjusting my internal timepiece to the clocks going back – surely it’s time to stop fannying about with the clocks! 

I suspect a lot of this comes down to how I grew up. Like most kids who grew up in the seventies, I went carol singing. Bundled up in coats that were never quite warm enough (a green canvas parka with fur around the hood and looking for all intents and purposes like Kenny from South Park), standing on doorsteps with a handful of other kids, singing our little hearts out. We collected a fair bit of pocket money doing it too. Looking back, I suspect most people were not paying us because we sounded good. They were probably paying us to go away, for fear of our scaring babes in arms or traumatising beloved household pets.

Still, we sang. Loudly. And with enthusiasm. And those songs lodged themselves somewhere deep in my brain, where they remain to this day.

By the time I was a teenager, Christmas had taken on a slightly different tone. Christmas Eve was for going out drinking. In my case, that usually meant downing pints of John Smith’s Bitter in a rock pub called The Ring O Bells in Barnsley. A proper pub. Sticky floors, red leb, loud music, and the sort of crowd where you could argue about bands all night.

After that, we would head to midnight mass.

Now, I am not religious. I am not Catholic either. But midnight mass was a right laugh. About seventy five percent of the congregation was either pissed or well on the way to being pissed. There was something wonderfully chaotic about it all. The singing, reminiscent of our younger carol-singing days, was enthusiastic rather than choral. The atmosphere was festive rather than reverent. It felt communal in the best possible way. 

And I loved the sing-along. That is something that has stuck with me.

I do like a good carol. If I were pushed to pick a favourite, I am not sure I could. Oh Little Town of Bethlehem has a gentleness to it that I really like. We Three Kings has that sense of movement and story. Little Donkey is just wonderful. God Bless You Merry Gentlemen still manages to feel slightly like most folk looked at church at Midnight Mass, though we mostly changed the words in the first line a smidge.

What surprises me is that, despite not actively participating in a Christmas sing-along for decades, I reckon I could still remember most of the words to most of those songs. They are burned in there somewhere, like muscle memory. Start one up, and I would probably be away, slightly (read totally) tuneless, but absolutely committed. As I’m writing this, I’ve got We Three Kings going through my head, and I can feel my body wanting to move to the rhythm – the emphasis on the WE three KINGS of ORIENT are!

So my gripe was never really about the songs themselves. It was about the timing.

I have been hearing Christmas music since the middle of October. That is too early. That is not festive. That is endurance. And while I am happy to extend a bit of goodwill to most festive staples, Mariah Carey can still do one.

There is something about Christmas music that only really works when the calendar catches up with it. It needs the darkness of December. It needs the cold evenings. It needs the sense that the year is winding down and that we are all collectively getting ready for something familiar and comforting.

Played too early, it loses its magic. It becomes background noise. Worse than that, it becomes REALLY freaking irritating.

Played at the right time, though, it feels wholly different.

I am fairly certain that on Christmas Day we will put the radio on at some point, and a few Christmassy tunes will drift through the house. They will not demand much attention, and I doubt there’ll be much singing along. They will just be there, part of the feel of the day. Cooking smells. Wrapping paper. Half-finished drinks. People talking over each other. Carols on the radio. Jumpers for goalposts…(Fast Show reference that most won’t get…)

And on New Year’s Day, as is tradition, I will listen to the Strauss concert from Vienna.

Now, I am not particularly keen on Strauss. That may well be sacrilege to some. But we have attended a concert at the venue it comes from, and that has lodged it firmly in my mind as a thing we just do. Tradition has a funny way of sneaking up on you like that.

And that, I think, is what Christmas should really be about.

Not perfect singing. Not forced cheer. Not playlists blaring for three months before the big day.

It should be about family. Tradition. Familiar rituals. The things we do because we have always done them, and because doing them again reminds us who we are and where we have come from.

Christmas songs and carols are part of that. They carry memory. They carry history. They carry the ghosts of our younger selves standing on cold pavements, or squeezed into pubs, or singing humungously off key in packed churches at midnight.

Christmas songs are meant to be shared – at the right time of year!

So yes, I will happily defend Christmas songs. I will even sing their praises at the right time of year. I will grumble like the Grinch when they arrive too early, and I will smile and feel a warm thrill when they finally feel appropriate. But they can sod off just as fast as they arrived, as far as I’m concerned!

This is my final Sunday Thoughts piece before Christmas Day itself, so it feels only right to end on that slightly bum note.

Wherever you are, whatever you celebrate, and however you choose to spend it, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas.

And if you find yourself humming a carol you have not heard in years, do not fight it. Some traditions are worth holding on to! 

I’m off to have a mince pie or seven!

Stuart Smith

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