The retail world lets out a collective groan when “All I Want For Christmas Is You” starts playing on repeat on November 1st. Everybody knows the song- the twinkly opening and joyful chorus, and most seem to hate it, but it and countless other similar songs play a huge role in Christmas popular culture and a hidden aspect of American history.
Several artists have tried their hand at crafting a Christmas album: Frank Sinatra, Mariah Carey, and Michael Bublé most notably. Classics like “Jingle Bells,” “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas,” “Let It Snow!,” and numerous others are from Sinatra’s Christmas discography alone. And as annoying as it gets, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” is an absolute staple of the holiday season. Bublé’s album does not quite have the star-power of Frank Sinatra’s or Mariah Carey’s, but there are a few recognizable songs like his version of, “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas,” and “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.”
One odd thing about artists’ Christmas albums is that they share a multitude of the same songs, and a wholly original Christmas song rarely sticks around as a holiday classic. All three of the aforementioned artists have made covers of “Silent Night,” and there are numerous other songs that overlap between their three albums. “Silent Night” itself was composed as a song in 1818, but written as a poem even earlier in 1816 in German. It’s the most recorded Christmas song too, with at least 137,000 known recordings.
“Silent Night” is by far the most recorded Christmas song, and one of the most recognizable, but plenty of other songs have been re-recorded over the years. “Jingle Bells” was also written in the 1800s, although slightly later in 1850, and has no outright connection to Christmas in the lyrics, but over the years has been wrapped into the holiday season. The rabbit hole goes incredibly far underground with Christmas music. Eventually, one may notice that recordings of songs that are commonly listened to today, like those previously mentioned as well as other classics like “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” “Winter Wonderland,” and several covers of “White Christmas,” are largely from the 40s, 50s, and 60s. No doubt thousands of Christmas songs exist from before and after these three decades, but what many think of as essential Christmas classics come from this period, and not without an explanation.
What does coincide with the 40s, 50s, and 60s is the Baby Boom, the postwar population rise that itself coincided with technological innovations like mass-produced, family-sized automobiles and the television. This is why our modern classics are not modern at all, and instead are the same songs our grandparents listened to: these songs were woven into society. They piggybacked into our era and stuck around for much longer than other trends, fads, etc. because they were popular when the technology that, decades later, continues to define American culture, was also new. Recent Christmas songs are sprinkled on top of the perennial classics and eventually fade, and that is if they even get popular in the first place. It is difficult to name more than one Christmas song on any top playlist that was recorded after the turn of the millennium, or even in the 80s onward.
Christmas is a hard genre to break into. Few artists, if any, make only Christmas music, but there are plenty that are only known for their Christmas albums and songs. Many can recognize the song, “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree,” but struggle to name the artist, Brenda Lee, behind it- much less another Brenda Lee song. Recently made Christmas songs rarely, if ever, make it into the yearly rotation of older hits. What this ends up producing is a clearly defined Christmas culture in America, where new songs, traditions, and beliefs are rare, and what past generations did to celebrate has stayed the same for generations.
