Favorite Christmas Song?

Christmas is the Time to Say I Love You - Billy Squier

 

New sub-category: Not My Favorite Christmas Song But Holy Baby Jesus They Blowed It Up Real Good!

 

Jethro Tull's A Christmas Song (the original version that appeared on Living In the Past, not the newer remastered version) is almost criminally underappreciated. It was released a couple of months after my best friend was killed in a car crash (we were in our senior year of high school), and every time I hear it, I'm always taken back to those awful days.

I'm also partial to ELP's Father Christmas, especially the last line: "the Christmas we get, we deserve."

As for traditional carols, I like the Carol of the Bells and O Holy Night. But, really, just about any Christmas song is good to me. They bring out the sentimental side of me that I usually keep well hidden. Hell, I even like Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer, and it isn't Christmas until I hear Santa Claus and His Old Lady ("far out, man, I played with that dude.")

 

I'm old, old school. Unless it's Mariah Care "All I Want for Christmas," every Christmas song prior to 1961 is fucking garbage*.

And nothing tops 'Bing's "I'll Be Home for Christmas "


* Fuck Peggy Lee. I HATE that song.

 

Little Drummer Boy

 

1). O, Holy Night -- I used to play piano, and absolutely loved doing that song. So wonderfully strong and triumphal, and yet, reverent.

2). O, Come All Ye Faithful -- the best of the popular traditional carols, in my opinion.

3). The Twelve Days of Christmas -- a childhood-t0-this-day family favorite, just for the fun of it. This was always the wrap-up of family gatherings around the piano while my grandmother played.

 

The worst is when some pop or country act tries to make a Christmas classic "hip."

 

Interesting take on the Christmas song drought.

No One Writes Great Christmas Songs Anymore

 

I've got a question about 'Grandma got run over by a reindeer;'
What is the deal with the blue and silver candles?
I've lived in NJ and went to college in Western PA. I've lived on Guam and in California.
I've traveled quite a bit.
I've never been any place where blue and silver candles are an established Christmas tradition.

Where are blue and silver candles part of established Christmas tradition?

 

And there is the nuts and bolts of songwriting:

 

I was thinking Alan Menken (of Disney fame) must have taken a crack or two at a Christmas song or two. He wrote the score to a Christmas Carol musical. It was made into a TV movie a few years back.

 

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