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Amazingly There’s ANOTHER 10 Christmas Songs You Probably Don’t Know!
🕑 Added 2024-12-09 13:33:35 +0000 UTCI WILL NEVER RUN OUT OF THESE THINGS. Seriously, I am actively trying to exhaust my never-ending search for obscure little holiday ditties that never made it into the cultural zeitgeist, and it STILL hasn’t happened! Heck, the majority of the songs on this list aren’t even things I stumbled onto in 2024! Most of them are leftovers from LAST year’s blog post that I didn’t have room to include! I've already got a whole blog's worth of songs built up for NEXT year! It truly is a never-ending rabbit hole! There is no bottom! I’ll be doing this FOREVER!
…good, because I still love this stuff.
Now, for all I just said about the supply of weird little Christmas obscurities being endless and all, I actually AM shaking the formula up a bit this year. Or, more to the point, I’m revisiting the original intent of these blogs, where it wasn’t just “You Probably Don’t Know This Song” and was more “I Actively Wish More People Knew This Song,” at least in a few places. There’s still a few absolute oddities here that I just wanted to throw in because who the heck else is gonna talk about them, but over all there’s a greater supply of songs I unironically do wish got more play around the world at Christmas time. As I always say, ANYTHING is better than hearing “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” or “Santa Baby” yet again. So the next time you find yourself backed into the corner with one of those tunes that have been terminally over-played, just remember that you COULD have been hearing one of these:
The Sound of Christmas - Julie Andrews
Back when I first started doing these blogs, one of my goals was to dig up some tunes I remembered from the old Christmas specials I’d always watch every year, yet never seemed to hear on their own as just SONGS. I got out of that habit as I stumbled onto more and more absolute obscurities that didn’t even make it as far as being on TV, but there were still a few more TV special tunes that I’d always meant to go back and plug in one of these blogs. “The Sound of Christmas” was right at the top of that list, and I don’t know how it’s taken me THIS long to actually talk about it.
“The Sound of Christmas” hails from a 1987 TV special of the same name that stared Julie Andrews, and yes, the Sound of Music parallel is entirely on purpose. I still really like that special, in no small part because I actually have memories of seeing it on TV in its natural habitat rather than just looking it up on YouTube decades later like with most of the holiday specials I watch. It’s sort of a hold-over from the older breed of variety special that all the networks used to crank out in the ‘60s & ‘70s (several of which also stared Julie Andrews) but with noticeably higher production values. Namely, instead of being shot on a soundstage or in front of a studio audience, The Sound of Christmas was filmed on location in Salzburg, Austria, the same place where The Sound of Music happened. They beat you over the head with that connection, too, since the whole thing starts with Andrews singing this title song while standing on THAT mountain top. Yes, the song is deliberately written to sound like the Rogers & Hammerstein tune, and I think it does a good job of evoking that same mood while still being enough of a legally distinct melody as to avoid getting sued (at least, I’m assuming they didn’t). Speaking of which, I specifically like the bridge, which directly quotes snippets of “Joy to the World,” “The First Noel,” and “Silent Night,” without being too distracting about it. “The Sound of Christmas” is too grand and swooning to really become a new holiday standard or anything, it’s pretty much exclusively designed for divas to sing, but I could see this song getting revived as the introductory track to more holiday music collections. The same singers who love to show off on “O Holy Night” could easily use this as a warm up track, and I’m sure we’d all appreciate the added variety.
Christmas Always Finds Me
Okay, this one isn’t a discovery of my own, it was actually my Dad who put it on my radar. It was apparently popularized, to the extent that it IS popular, by singer Ingrid Andress, and I suppose her version is fine. Like, I’m not going to actively tell you NOT to listen to her version, it’s a worthy enough addition to any Christmas playlist, if you like this sort of thing. Her version is a piano ballad, though, and years of “inspirational” piano soundtracks to sappy movies and YouTube videos have largely destroyed my ability to take that kind of modern piano plinking seriously. That, and Andress has the kind of voice that screams “I am singing this for a Hallmark Holiday Special,” which I’m not down for. (In fact, I think this song was literally recorded for a Hallmark something or other) No, the version I like is a sparser acoustic version by a fellow named Mateo Oxley. I don’t know a single thing about Oxley, and I even had to do some digging to verify that his version was the cover (it is, Andress wrote the original), but I know I like the folkier guitar version of “Christmas Always Finds Me” a lot better than the piano one. It’s got that nice “relaxing up in the mountains” kind of vibe, or being out at your grandma’s house two hours away from everything. I also like the lyrics a lot, which tackle the whole getting older and struggling to keep the Christmas spirit topic in a far less schmaltzy way than, say, “Where Are You Christmas?” ever did. In case you couldn’t tell from my posting THIS many blogs about lesser-known songs that you could be using to combat the over-exposure of those same two dozen songs that every radio station plays in December, I take the matter of replenishing a dwindling Christmas spirit pretty seriously. Better yet, the sparse and straightforward nature of “Christmas Always Finds Me” makes it a nice pallet cleanser if you’re getting a bit overwhelmed by the big, sugary standards. Definitely look this one up.
The Little Shepherd - The Peter Pan Singers
Okay, this one’s just here for me. “The Peter Pan Singers” don’t really exist, that’s just a name that one of those shady budget labels who cranked out rips-off albums in the ‘50s and ‘60s concocted in order to give some semblance of authenticity to a random assortment of studio musicians who were hired for a session one afternoon, and whose work would then be recycled to pad out numerous bargain bin releases for years to come. I stumbled upon this when it appeared on Snoopy’s Christmas from Diplomat Records, which very much does NOT feature the version of the title track recorded by The Royal Guardsmen, and the packaging tries really hard to distract you from that fact. And no, “The Little Shepard” and the rest of the album’s contents sound nothing like the shaky Garage Rock of the title track, seeing as how they were clearly recorded years earlier for some other project. But what can I say? I just find something fascinating about the shadier side of the old-school record industry, which somehow found ways to be even sleazier than the present day industry. Funny that I say all this stuff about sleaziness and dishonesty in my preamble to discussing a song about people needing to be better to each other. THAT’S the Christmas spirit for ya!
But seriously, I like this tune a lot. A lot of people would probably find it dreary and stuffy, what with how it’s deliberately trying to sound “churchy-y,” but I’ve always had a real weakness for the chord changes in this sort of liturgical music. Also, it’s another tune that I find valuable as a pallet cleanser, since it sounds so different from most of the Christmas tunes of its era, especially the ones that actually managed to stick around (see also “My Christmas Tree” by The Going Thing in a previous blog for another example of a song only I would love). And not for nothing, but “The Little Shepherd” actually DID get a cover at some point in the sixties, by The Peter Wood Singers… and it’s a whole lot worse than the Peter Pan Singers version. But it’s a lot faster and more energetic than the attempt at a contemporary hymn I’ve chosen to spotlight. Admittedly, I have no idea which of these even came first, that’s how poorly documented this kind of disposable pop was back in the day. I just heard the Peter Pan one first, so I’m assuming it was “the original.” But yeah, I like this one, and now you know it exists as well. THE INFECTION IS SPREADING.
It’s Our Favorite Time Of The Year
Remember what I was saying about covering more songs that appeared in Christmas specials? Well, upon reflection, I’m absolutely SHOCKED that I haven’t mentioned any of the songs Hanna Barbera slipped into their Christmas specials over the years. Not just because those things have been TV rerun staples for longer than even I’ve been alive, but because they actually kept reusing the same songs over and over. I know, right? Hanna Barbera recycling content? Who would have imagined? But seriously, while I’m sure it was just an attempt at saving money and getting a return on their investment, it really FEELS like somebody at Hanna-Barbera was trying to get their own new canon of holiday tunes up and running. The way these songs keep popping up in different specials, it really creates the impression of them being some kind of standard that you just never noticed before. From 1972’s A Christmas Story (no, not that one) through A Flintsones Christmas and Casper’s First Christmas all the way to Yogi’s First Christmas in 1980, they just kept reusing these songs in new contexts. In fact, I kept flip-flopping on which of those Hanna-Barbera songs I even wanted to put in this spot on the blog, so it’s a pretty fair bet that I’ll be revisiting this topic next year.
But as you can see, I eventually settled on “It’s Our Favorite Time of the Year,” which originally appeared in A Flinstones Christmas before getting recycled in Yogi’s First Christmas a few years later. The original version is technically called “MY Favorite Time of the Year” and it more spoken than sung by Fred, but the latter version version has a full group performance and is my preferred incarnation of the song. It’s also one of the songs I have the easiest time imagining getting played outside of the context of a cartoon. Oh, make no mistake, it’s every bit as corny as you’d expect a song written to be sung by a cartoon caveman would be, I’m just saying the others are even cornier in their own ways. I could easily see “It’s Our Favorite Time of the Year” being sung on an old Andy Williams special, or being used as the jingle in a Christmas commercial, and if that doesn’t just scream “holiday standard” then I don’t know what does. It’s bouncy and jolly and catchy and I wouldn’t complain if it occasionally got played in a context outside of reruns on Boomerang.
Santa Loves Rock ’n’ Roll Music - The Rhodes Kids
Now here’s a real obscurity for you. I’d never even heard of The Rhodes Kids before stumbling onto this 45 in a used record bin at McKay’s, and I get the impression that’s probably true of a lot of people from outside of Texas. The Rhodes Kids were a group of siblings that basically tried to be a white Jackson 5… which is to say they were a Texan version of The Osmonds. And no, from the examples I’ve heard, they weren’t anywhere near as good as either of those family bands, but at the same time, there’s far FAR worse ‘70s Bubblegum you could get stuck listening to. The Rhodes Kids were alright. (Check out “Won’t Let You Pass Me By” if you want my personal recommendation, though “I Need Your Lovin” is pretty hilarious in a “white kids should not be trying to sound this funky” kind of way) Of course, they just had to crank out a Christmas album of their own in ’74, and it’s pretty much exactly what you’d imagine from the description above. If you ever wanted to spend the holidays in a Vegas showroom in the middle of the ‘70s, this is what you’d be hearing. Mostly a bunch of familiar Christmas standards with everything from wacka-chiwacka guitars to sappy Country ballads, all with harmonies written around kids whose voices haven’t all cracked yet. I’ll leave it up to you to decide for yourself if that sounds charming or hilarious or horrible.
However, even the kitschiest lounge act knew that your album needed to have at least one or two new songs to balance out all the covers, if only so that you’d have some songwriting royalties to pocket, and in a best case scenario to get some radio airplay. Then again, “Santa Loves Rock ’n’ Roll Music” was written by country songwriter Johnny Wilson, so maybe I don’t know how this stuff works after all. Whatever the case, “Santa Loves Rock ’n’ Roll Music” kicks off with a guitar break that sounds like it should be the theme to a Christmas-themed ‘70s cop show, and just putting that mental image in my brain is enough to earn it a spot on this list. Otherwise, it’s a pretty standard bubblegum pop of the era, just with a token sprinkling of jingle bells and references to Santa and the elves rocking out. If you’ve got a low tolerance for the likes of Bobby Sherman or The DeFranco Family, you’ll probably find this pretty dang annoying. However, if you like manufactured oldies pop trash as much as I do, or just want more Oldies Radio Christmas tunes to play in between “Snoopy’s Christmas” and “Little Saint Nick,” then “Santa Loves Rock ’n’ Roll Music” will probably be a fun addition to your playlists.
Christmas Lullaby - The Ambassador Chorale
Okay, I take back what I said earlier. HERE’S the real deep cut, so deep that the only place I could find it on YouTube was on postings of an entire album all at once. It’s also where things get really confusing, because I stumbled onto this oddity while trying to track down more information on “The Little Shepherd” as mentioned earlier. A few of the songs that I’d previously seen credited to “The Peter Pan Singers” overlapped with some other recordings credited to “The Ambassador Chorale,” who had also recorded a tune called “The Shepherd Boy’s Carol.” I was hoping that would turn out to be another version of “The Little Shepherd,” but it wasn’t. HOWEVER, that album also contained this little ditty, which I like a lot for reasons I’m kind of struggling to communicate. The melody and chord changes on “Christmas Lullaby” have a lot of really surprising little minor key turns, to the point that it’s almost… well, “creepy” is too strong a word, but maybe a bit eerie? Or just melancholic? Oh, wait, I know: it sounds like something that could be slipped into The Nightmare Before Christmas and nobody would question it. Heck, the first few notes of the opening are basically quoting “Swan Lake,” and when your Christmas song is opening the same way as Dracula… I’m not even sure how to finish that sentence. I really like it a lot, though, and whoever wrote this thing really had a knack for evocative melodic turns… which makes it a TRUE shame that I can find so little information about this song. In case it wasn’t clear from the start of this paragraph, there is very little documentation regarding these ephemeral releases from fly-by-night kiddie organizations like “Tinkerbell Records.” And let’s be honest, “Christmas Lullaby” is a pretty Google-proof title. It’s hardly surprising that this song isn’t better known, at this point it’s a miracle that it’s been preserved at all. Still, I’d love to hear more from whoever the heck made it.
Reggae Christmas - Gable Hall School Choir
Now that just sounds like a gag entry I would make up to see if anyone would notice. But no, I swear, this is a real thing. Or, at least, it genuinely exists as a real recording. It’s entirely possible that the whole thing a gag, though, because… well, just look up at the top of this entry and tell me that this is meant to be serious. And no, it’s not just the fact that “Christmas” and “Reggae” is being combined here, it’s the fact that Christmas and Reggae are being combined BY A BRITISH CHILDREN’S CHOIR. I mean… what?
But the true kicker is, it’s not actually that bad a tune. The core melody is a perfectly functional little holiday ditty, perfectly suitable for playing on a quaint music box or a big Mannheim Steamroller synth. What’s more, aside from some shouting of the title bookending the song, the lyrics don’t have anything to do with Reggae or Jamaica the tropics or anything like that, it’s all snow and Santa and the usual. But then there's the backing track. It really feels like some enterprising producer dug up a completely standard, average holiday tune and just slapped some reggae guitars on top of it. And honestly, that’s probably the best any of us could have hoped for, because some Brit in 1972 trying to deliberately write a song about Rastafarian Santa Claus would absolutely have turned out to be really embarrassing. Instead, “Reggae Christmas” is just kinda goofy, but harmless. Honestly, it’s weirdly catchy, with the Reggae beat syncing up with the melody a lot better than it really ought to. If you like your Christmas songs a bot on the wonky side, this is definitely a choice that would succeed at making everyone at your holiday gatherings go “Wait, WHAT?”
All Around The Christmas Tree - John Klein
And now, pretty much the exact opposite of that previous entry in absolutely every way possible. “All Around The Christmas Tree” is probably the most stereotypical Christmas song on this entire list. Versions of this song seem to have been floating around since at least the mid-1940s, though an obnoxiously high percentage of the search results I find are for OTHER songs with more or less the same name. Still, I can say for certain that it got the peak “doughy white guy singing with an orchestra” treatment by Barry Wood in 1945. However, the version I’ve latched onto is an instrumental performed by John Klein on a carillon. Basically, imagine a pipe organ, but instead of pipes, each “key” is attached to a church bell. No, I didn’t realize that was an official thing until I stumbled onto this guy’s Christmas album. Yes, half the reason I’m including this entry is just so I can drop that knowledge onto somebody else.
But as for “All Around The Christmas Tree” itself, the song in its standard form is another average “Christmas Morning is a thing that exists” type of tune, with lyrics that really aren’t anything special. That is, I already think this song benefits from being presented as an instrumental in general, and I think this is a particularly good one. Specifically, the orchestral backing behind all the bells is muzak kitsch of the highest cheese, pure elevator music. I already have a weakness for this kind of gooey saccharine slop in a Christmas context as it is, and throwing a wall of church bells at it just makes things all the more interesting to me. Like, on the surface, it all just seems like your standard bargain bin at Goodwill old white person easy listening music… because it is. But the specific combination just strikes me as funnier and funnier the more I dwell on it. I always associate this kind of orchestral easy listening music with those old educational film strips from MST3k and Rifftrax, the stock library music that’d get slapped onto some lecture on food buying habits or getting a Home Economics degree. Which makes it REALLY weird when this wall of church bells smashes into the whole thing. Like, it’s as if this is the soundtrack on the training film Quasimodo watched when he started working at Notre Dame.
But setting all that aside, I just like “All Around The Christmas Tree.” It’s probably a bit too bombastic to serve as background music for most people, but it’s exactly the kind of tune I could easily see playing in, like, one of those drive-through Christmas light displays. That, or as a substitute for “We Need A Little Christmas” if you’ve heard that too many times but need a similarly lively tune.
LAST MINUTE EDIT! Boy, my subconscious really knew what it was doing when it drew that Rifftrax connection earlier. It turns out there’s actually a version of this very song in THIS unintentionally creepy short that Rifftrax covered a while back! The short doesn’t seem to have any credits to say if that version is also by Barry Wood (it may be racist for me to say this, but all doughy middle-aged 1940s white guys sound alike to me) but it’s a MUCH higher quality recording than the one I’d previously encountered, and one I’d seriously have considered adding to this list even without the John Klein version out there. All the more evidence that wee need more versions of this song in circulation!
Sutekina Holiday - Mariya Takeuchi
I used to name these blogs some variation of “Obscure Christmas Songs,” but stopped because of how nebulous and subjective the notion of “obscurity” really is. Case in point, “Sutekina Holiday” is barely known in most of the English-speaking world, but it’s one of the most recognizable Christmas songs in all of Japan. This is literally the KFC Christmas jingle, and if you know anything about how Japan celebrates Christmas, then you know that being directly connected to KFC is only one step below having the Baby Jesus himself officially slap a holiday merit badge on your face. I don’t even think it’s a joke to suggest that there are children in Japan right now who don’t realize that Santa Claus and Colonel Sanders aren’t meant to be the same character.
But more importantly, “Sutekina Holiday” is just a delightful little tune. Despite what you’d think from my various interests, I’d actually long avoided digging into Japanese Christmas songs, largely because many of them are just thinly-veiled breakup songs with vague references to Christmas (another side effect of how Japan celebrates the holiday). That is, even if you don’t understand they lyrics, the songs don’t really “sound Christmas-y,” they’re just standard contemporary Pop songs. Yeah, I know we can say that about a lot of Christmas songs over here in the anglosphere… and guess what? I DO say that! A lot, actually! “Sutekina Holiday,” on the other hand, has no such problem. This song ABSOLUTELY sounds like Christmas. The very melody itself is clearly written to evoke a sort of “jingle bell” trotting rhythm, and the arrangement is suitably bouncy to match. Even people who DIDN’T first encounter this tune while browsing Japanese Christmas commercials on YouTube, like I did, would still be able to listen to it and immediately pick up on the Holiday Vibes™. That, or maybe a song that a bunch of cartoon animals in an old Disney film might sing while doing chores. Whichever is more enchanting to you. Either way, for whimsicalness alone, I think “Sutekina Holiday” deserves to be more of a Christmas standard outside of Japan. At the very least, KFC should really commission an English version to use in some commercials over here.
…and just in case that name is striking any of you as familiar: Yes, this is indeed the same Mariya Takeuchi who recorded “Plastic Love.” It’s a City Pop Christmas! (And fun fact, she just happens to be married to Tatsuro Yamashita, who among other things, wrote the song “Christmas Eve,” which is pretty much the reigning king of the “lonely Christmas” songs I alluded to earlier. Talk about a musical power couple.)
Waffle House Christmas - Mary Welch Rogers
Yes. This is a song that exists. No, it’s not Waffle House trying to pull their own KFC maneuver to take over the holiday and turn waffles at 2am into a new holiday tradition… I think. No, the real story here is those big juke boxes every Waffle House used to have by the door. Or maybe they still do have them? I dunno. I don’t really eat out much anymore, so I haven’t been inside a Waffle House in ages. But back when I DID, I remember those things being an absolute staple of every location. And what’s more, I remember that if you inspected them closely, you would find a lot of weird, custom-made, waffle-related songs sprinkled in amid the real songs. We’re talking all-time bangers like “It’s A Waffle Great Day” and “There’s 844,739 Ways To Eat A Hamburger At Waffle House” and the immortal “Last Night I Saw Elvis At The Waffle House.” Oh, did I mention that a lot of these songs were written by the same guys who composed “Pac-Man Fever?” Also, I recall being told that the staff would get REALLY mad if anybody every actually played one of those songs, but I never had the guts to try it and find out. But what matters to our little story is that they had some custom-made Christmas songs mixed in with all the other slices of waffle propaganda, so of course I had to mention at least one of them.
Now, if you’re anything like me, you’d see that title “Waffle House Christmas” and immediately imagine some kind of Honky Tonk Country tune, as much about driving a truck as it is about either Christmas or Waffle House. But no! It turns out “Waffle House Christmas” is actually a lush orchestral ‘80s ballad, with only the faintest traces of Country to be found. If anything, this sounds like the sort of holiday jingle that a suburban department store would play in their seasonal commercials. Even though I’m almost certain I’d never actually heard this song before last year, It SOUNDS like a song I would have heard all throughout my childhood, if only because I probably did hear a few dozen other Christmas jingles that sounded just like it. It’s cheesy and sappy and, dare I say it, SYRUPY? …yeah, I know, I don’t deserve to be allowed to continue this blog after that one.
Still, the sheer absurdity of just what this song actually is grants it just enough novelty to spice up the otherwise bland slush of the music. There’s a warped sense of identity here that hundreds of other songs of the same musical quality lack. For better or for worse. Also, just to be clearer about what was already implied earlier, this is NOT the only Christmas-themed Waffle House song out there. I just might have to revisit this topic in the future…
And on THAT ominous note, our blog comes to a close! That’s ten more Christmas songs that you probably didn’t know about, or at the very least hadn’t been thinking about until I reminded you it existed. And yet again, I’ve ALREADY got a surplus of additional songs that got left off this list, but will probably wind up on NEXT year’s blog! It’s like I said! There truly is no end to it all! I can keep doing these blogs until the end of time! YOU WILL NEVER ESCAPE A MERRY CHRISTMAS!
