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10 Obscure Christmas Songs I Wish Were More Popular
🕑 Added 2019-12-21 19:42:25 +0000 UTCOkay, last time I threw a bone to my holiday-hating friends and unleashed my bile and wrath over Christmas songs I DON’T like, so now the other shoe drops. As I said more than once in that blog, I actually LOVE Christmas stuff, music included. I fire up my massive holiday playlists as soon as Thanksgiving hits, and it’s literally the only thing I listen to for the next month. That’s not something inflicted on me by mass media or mainstream broadcast outlets or the overhead speakers of my workplace, that is a DELIBERATE CHOICE. Even discounting the fact that I never got over my childhood love of presents and decorations, it’s just the kind of music I really enjoy. I love happy melodies and intricate orchestration and lush harmonies and slick polish and all the stereotypically “Christmasy” musical tropes. Heck, I just like the sound of bells. I am actively Pro Christmas Music. But as I ALSO said before, I do get it. I know what it’s like to actively hate something that’s all over the place (that’s almost certainly how I feel about that one popular thing you love). I know how being exposed to certain media in a stressful work situation can ruin that media for you (I heard Gotey’s “Somebody That I Used To Know” a lot working at that restaurant, and I NEVER need to hear it again). And above all else, I know how overexposure can ruin even the greatest song. We’ve all heard the complaint about how the mall sound system and all-holiday radio play the same two-dozen songs over and over for a month. Of course, that’s how I feel about radio in general these days, which is why I always keep a device loaded to bear with carefully curated playlists on me in the first place. This goes TRIPPLE at Christmas.
My folder of Christmas music is currently 3.2 DAYS long. Over three entire days of continuous, uninterrupted music before even ONE track has a chance to repeat. Obviously, that’s broken down further into smaller playlists with a rather less gargantuan selection, but the point is I do a LOT of song collecting, specifically to avoid the kind of burnout that a lot of other people experience over Christmas. Hearing “Silver Bells” two hundred times in three weeks isn’t QUITE so bad if you don’t hear the same version more than twice. Even more important than multiple cover versions, though, is having a healthy library of OTHER Christmas song. See, as much as we collectively overplay the same handful of songs over and over every year, there are HUNDREDS of other holiday-related songs sitting cast off and neglected in the pop culture gutter. The one token original composition on a covers album, soundtracks to holiday specials, older hymns and folks songs that just didn’t luck out at the standard lottery, and just the occasional random new tune by some naive fool who doesn’t realize how saturated the market is. It’s a shame because there’s a lot of really good songs out there that deserve to be heard more often than they do, and even more admittedly average songs that nevertheless serve the important task of not being the tenth round of chestnuts roasting on an open fire in a single day. So let’s talk about some of them!
A few caveats before we start: This is very much a list by Christmas junkies FOR Christmas junkies. I hold no illusions of this little list winning over anyone who just plain doesn’t like Christmas music in the first place, so don’t expect anything utterly life-changing here. It’s just some stuff I think that a person who already likes this kind of stuff would ALSO like. On that same note, I don’t claim that any of these individual songs are masterpieces in their own right. I might compare them to more familiar Christmas standards to provide some context, but I’m not suggesting anything here REPLACE any of those. Besides, SOME degree of familiar nostalgia is part of the fun, I’m just recommending ways to preserve that fun by avoiding an overdose. What’s more, I’m not necessarily endorsing all of these songs “as is,” some of them might need a little work. A few of these are sort of half-songs from some movie or special that I think could be good ‘real” songs if somebody fleshed them out a bit more, or a really esoteric original that I think somebody else could turn into a standard with the right rearrangement. Use your imagination on a few of these, please? Also, since “songs that somehow pertain to this one certain holiday” is broad to the point of meaningless in genre terms, I should establish that my tastes in holiday music run VEEEEERY mellow. Nothing against big, loud, jolly jingle bell songs, of course, but at the end of the day, my idea Christmas songs are, well, for the end of the day. I like soft, soothing, mellow tunes; the kind one listens to while cruising around the neighborhood at light to look at all the lights. Real low-key stuff. So don’t expect to see any new Jingle Bell Rock lurking anywhere below. Finally, I’m sure there’s going to be a few songs on this list that aren’t “obscure” to you. In fact, there’s at least one I’m CERTAIN everybody recognizes when they hear it. I just mean “obscure” in casual, mainstream , listening just for the sake of listening sense. If I don’t normally hear it at the mall, it goes here. And even then, I dunno what they play at YOUR mall, I can only speak from my own experience. So no arguments about what does or doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in what context. Okay? Everybody ready for some forced holiday enchantment? Then let’s go!
Right away, we have a song where “obscure” is debatable, because how obscure can The Song From Home Alone be? Everybody’s seen that, so everybody’s heard the song, right? Well, first of all, you’d be shocked and horrified at how many youngsters these days haven’t seen That One Thing That Was Omnipresent When YOU Were Young. And anyway, I’m not talking about knowing a song from a movie or show or special, I’m talking about hearing a song on its own, just as a stand along piece of music. While I vague remember a BIT of a push to make “Somewhere In My Memory” a standard in the early 90s, it’s been a loooong time since I personally have heard it in anything other than specifically Home Alone-related circumstances. Other covers by other artists exist, sure, and some of them are pretty high-profile, but again, it's always in the context of "that one song from Home Alone." I never seem to encounter this out in the world just on its own merits as a song. Which is a shame because it’s a very pretty tune. If you’re looking to capture the warm, gooey, sentimental side of the holiday experience, it’s hard to do better than peak-era John Williams. With that music box melody and the children’s choir and the swooping fairy tale ambiance, it hits all the obvious Christmas clichés, but hits them well. I don’t mind a song that’s obvious so long as the obviousness isn’t the result of laziness, and there’s nothing lazy about a song this finely crafted. It got an Academy Award nomination for a reason.
Incidentally, “The Closing of The Year” from Toys was another movie song in the running for this list, and I guarantee no one would have disputed the obscure status of THAT one.
Okay, this is why I put that disclaimer in the intro about not all the songs being recommended “as is,” because this is really only about one-fifth of a song. It’s the sappy piano ballad from the Garfield Christmas special that the family sings a verse of before Grandma has her Poignant Emotional Moment ™ with Garfield, and as far as I know, nobody ever wrote any more than what appeared onscreen. (Heck, I'm not even absolutely 100% sure "Christmas In Your Heart" is the actual title) That’s too bad, because I think there’s the start of a really good song here. Yes, it’s one of the five million attempts to re-do the “here’s my list of Christmasy things I like” formula that Robert Wells and Mel Tormé already nailed seventy years ago, but “The Christmas Song” is right at the top of the In Danger Of Over-Exposure list. Substituting a few more songs of a similar nature is just the responsible thing to do, to conserve our resources. Gotta keep our Christmas music sustainable, right? But seriously, “Christmas In Your Heart” is a nice, relaxing earworm that any smooth jazz or adult contemporary artists could make good work of, assuming somebody did a good job with writing the necessary extra verses.
Oh, and before anybody asks: yes, there are more songs from kids’ Christmas specials here, but no, I am not advocating for more versions of “You Can Never Find An Elf When You Need One.” That is clearly a perfect, flawless classic that would only be lessened by other, lesser attempts.
Another Christmas Special refugee, and this time it’s actually a full song! …though as a trade off, I’m pretty sure I’m the one person in existence who still remembers it. “Wintertime’s Here” hails from The Christmas Tree Train, the debut of Buttons & Rusty, the Chucklewood critters. It was an attempt by some Hanna-Barbera expats to do their own version of Yogi Bear, and it apparently managed to run for nearly two decades without making a memorable impression on a single person on Earth. Well, aside from me, that is, because my parents taped The Christmas Tree Train one year, which granted it a permanent place in my brain’s Christmas lobe, songs included. The one standout for me I THINK is called “Wintertime’s Here,” though it also might be called “It’s Snowing.” This was such a smalltime operation that I don’t think the song has EVER been released anywhere, so I’ve never seen a definitive title listing. That’s too bad, because I could see a lot of artists making good work of this one. It’s got a kind of mid-tempo vaudeville feel to it, and could just as easily be smoothed out to another piano ballad or sped up as some twee indie-pop (most likely featuring an obnoxious ukulele). Again, the whole idea here is to suggest means of breaking up holiday monotony, so songs with extra versatility are a plus.
In the interest of intellectual honesty, though, I must acknowledge some hypocrisy: I went on record in the last blog as not liking “Christmas songs” that in no way mention Christmas, but this one is exclusively about frozen precipitation and I like it just fine. Really, my pet peeve is just LOVE SONGS that masquerade as Christmas songs; wintery songs are just fine with me. Heck, I don’t even mind token romantic lyrics as long as they’re sufficiently hidden behind lots of snow and sleigh bells and a sufficiently frosty ambiance. See the fact that I like John Denver’s “Aspenglow” and Gordon Lightfoot’s “Song For A Winter’s Night” in a Christmas context as further hypocrisy. I’m just a sucker for snow (which is clearly why I live in The South)
There’s a special, weird place in music history for those cases where an artist is blatantly trying to write a big hit over again. Sometimes the blatant rejiggering can yield a song equally as good if not better than the original. I think The Kinks genuinely improved on “You Really Got Me” when the folded it over on itself and got “All Day And All Of The Night,” and Chubby Checker’s “Let’s Twist Again” burrowed a hole in the back of my brain the likes of which the original could never hope to achieve. Of course, those successes tend to be in the minority. Most attempts at rewriting a hit just take what would ordinarily be a forgettable song and make it laughable by constantly reminding you of something a lot better. See John Fred & His Playboy Band’s “Judy In Disguise (with glasses)” remake “Silly Sarah Carter (eating on a moonpie)” for an especially embarrassing example. And then there’s the cases that are just… meh. Not bad, maybe even good, but so blatantly reminiscent of another song that there’s just no reason not to go listen to THAT. To bring up The Kinks again, “I Need You” or “The Hard Way” would come across as perfect fine in a world where “You Really Got Me” didn’t exist, but have no chance at establishing an identity of themselves in a world where it does.
Which brings us around to “Wonderful Day” a 1963 single by Alvin & The Chipmunks that’s pretty much the exact same song as 1958’s “The Chipmunk Song.” They’re nearly identical: a waltz in three-part helium-powered harmony with comedy bits sprinkled throughout. I had to listen to the two back to back to notice they’re not actually in the same key, they’re so similar. There’s really no reason anyone itching for a Chipmunks song wouldn’t go straight to THE Chipmunk song, which is a shame, because I honestly think the SONG part of “Wonderful Day” is quite a bit better than “The Chipmunk Song.” It’s just a little bit catchier to my ears, and significantly less comedic. I could easily see any vocal groups (or a traditional country band, odd as that might seem) doing a completely straightforward cover and nobody ever guessing it was Chipmunk-related. And that’d be a really good thing, because the Chipmunk shtick is a LOT heavier on “Wonderful Day” than the more famous song, climaxing in Alvin playing a deliberately off-key harmonica over several parts. It’s the one aspect in which the song genuinely exceeds “The Chipmunk Song,” and that is not in any way a good thing. This song deserves better.
Oh, and while we’re talking about The Chipmunks, their 80s revival recorded ANOTHER holiday tune, “Here Comes Christmas” that I ALSO think deserves to be better known than it is. At least, I think so. Apparently there are multiple compositions with that title floating around, and even I have better things to do than individually track down and listen to every single search result with this name, but I THINK the one I like hasn’t been recorded without ultra high frequency vocals. Well, at least this song didn’t have Dave’s terrifying rage issues intruding over the music like “Wonderful Day.”
If this song hadn’t been written for Adventures in Odyssey, it’d be a geek culture standard by now, mark my words. It’s the best Christmas song They Might Be Giants never recorded, and I can think of dozen of dorky comedians and twee indie darlings who’d have a ball with “Seasonal Felicitations” big words and historical shoutouts. (This song is basically the only reason I know what “Saturnalia” is) Heck, it was even written for ukulele, BEFORE a generation of hipsters ruined the instrument! Alas, there’s not many artists from those realms who spend much time listening to Christian radio dramas, so those covers will probably never exists.
…which actually MIGHT be a good thing. I am being very, foolishly optimistic here in assuming that these imaginary song covers would actually be GOOD. While I’d like to see some other, quality incarnations of “Seasonal Felicitations” in circulation, I can also see how this would be a very easy song to ruin. In just the past few days, I’ve heard some especially heinous butcherings of “You’re A Mean One, Mister Grinch,” and I don’t think the world needs MORE un-funny funny songs, Christmas or otherwise. So, basically, I want “Seasonal Felicitations” to be more popular, but only after I give EVERY SINGLE RENDITION my carefully considered permission to exist. This sounds like a reasonable thing to ask.
This is another one where the “obscure” status is probably debatable, because it IS around. Heck, it dates all the way back to the 1500s, so clearly the song has some staying power. There’s plenty of choirs out there who still dig it out, and even versions by artists as well known as Sting, Loreena McKennitt, and of all people, Heart (well, technically the Wilson Sister’s side project The Lovemongers). Still, my criteria for obscurity is whether or not you can hear a song fifty times blaring over store speakers or as stock background music in a dozen different holiday specials. “Balulalow” doesn’t meet that criteria, so onto the obscure list it goes.
And I wish it didn’t, because I think “Balulalow” is absolutely GORGEOUS. It fits in the same Olde Fashioned Church Choir role as “O Holy Night,” but without any of the clichéd over-familiarity. It’s also more of an ensemble piece, with less room for some scene-stealing diva to hog the big note. It’s also, and this is one of the most embarrassingly forced things I could ever say about a song, a really magical-sounding song. Seriously, if there were a Harry Potter Christmas Special (and I’m honestly making a big leap by assuming there isn’t, and not that I'm just ignorant) this would be the theme song. It’s got this haunting lullaby/folk tune melody, with surprise minor key changes at just the right spots to keep things that much more ethereal. It doesn’t even have a chance to overstay its welcome, either. The standard arrangement of the song is just a little over a minute long. So if you’ve heard “It Came Upon A Midnight Clear” a few too many times, slip “Balulalow” into the playlist. The playlist will thank you. (And while we’re on the subject, “The Star Carol” could stand to receive some more mainstream love as an alternative Christmas choir piece)
Up top, I mentioned “the one token original composition on a covers album,” and this is the main thing I was thinking of. Percy Faith’s Christmas Is… album is almost entirely orchestral renditions of familiar holiday standards, with the sole exception of the newly-written title track. Now, Percy Faith is best remembered for the hit version of “Theme from A Summer Place,” that one old fashioned easy listening musical sample that you’ve heard a million times even if you had no idea what it was. “Christmas Is…” sounds exactly like what you’d think a holiday song by the “Theme from A Summer Place” guy would sound like. Early 60s muzak orchestration, a breathy female chorus, literally the exact same rhythm as “Summer Place,” it’s %100 Christmas elevator music. And you know what? I’m all about that, and I can think of plenty of kitsch aficionados who’d be great at doing goofy ironic covers of it.
However, that’s not what I’d MOST like to hear. See, while it’s long since fallen off the radar NOW, “Christmas Is…” seems to have made a serious effort at being a thing in the mid-to-late 60s, and the version I’ve always liked best is a 1969 cover by Jack Jones. Jones was sort of a Sinatra-y crooner, and he sands off a lot of the frothier bits and turns it into more of a smooth lounge number. You don’t have to be a fan of kitsch to like this version, you just need to be in the market for something to swap out “The Christmas Song” for when Nat Cole needs a rest. There should really be more versions of this arrangement floating around out there today. (And if you don’t like Elevator Christmas OR Lounge Christmas, then be glad I didn’t suggest Hagood Hardy’s “Wintertime” or The Four Freshmen’s version of “Snowfall.” Yep, sure is a good thing I didn’t mention THOSE anywhere)
I was really torn on whether or not to add purely instrumental pieces onto this list. There’s certainly a number of little known Christmas instrumentals I’d love to see get more attention. “Evergreen” by Jars of Clay, “Catching Snowflakes on Your Tongue” by Mannheim Steamroller, and “New Spirit” by Teja Bell (which I can't even find on YouTube, speaking of obscure) are all right up there. But… well… I mean… What makes a song “a Christmas song” if there’s literally no lyrics with which to be ABOUT Christmas? Is it really just a matter of dubbing some jingle bells onto it and mentioning something wintery in the title? Isn’t that, like, kind of cheating or something? Then again, “Linus & Lucy” has more or less become a holiday standard in its own right, and that’s literally got NOTHING Christmas-y about it aside from the special it was first heard on. “Dance of the Snowmen” is at least from The Snowman, which should technically make it count just as much. Besides, The Snowman also gave us “Walking In The Air,” which has literally nothing to do with Christmas either but is one of my all-time favorites. So what they hey, let’s throw “Dance of the Snowmen” in too.
I must confess, though, I have no idea of this is actually what this particular musical cue is called. I’m not sure if ANY of the bits of the score to The Snowman have names outside of “Walking In The Air,” I’m just going by the title of a YouTube video here. But you know what I mean if you’ve seen it, the part right after the kid meets Santa where all the snowmen dance a jig to this really bouncy, energetic tune. That tune NEEDS to be more of a thing. I want to hear Mannheim Steamroller do a version of THAT. I want to hear a bell choir version and a new age-y piano version and an ironic surf guitar version and all that good stuff. There’s a lot of different directions that a lot of different artists could take the “Dance of the Snowmen” melody, and our holiday pop culture is lesser for the lack of it.
This may be the oddest inclusion on this list, and it’s another example of the “one original song” phenomena I mentioned earlier. The Mannheim Steamroller Christmas albums are best known for their covers of popular traditional songs, but there’s almost always at least one new composition thrown in. Some of which even go beyond the presence of jingle bells and generally wistful ambiance and have explicitly Christmas lyrics! “Above The Northern Lights” is my favorite of the bunch, though it’s also the weirdest and would probably be the hardest sell to people less weird than me. This is a downright spacey song, with waves upon waves of synth keyboards and wooshing artificial choir sounds and no percussion to speak of. This is what Christmas at a planetarium show would sound like. Not an ideal pick for the “All I Want For Christmas Is You” crowd, but good for anyone who enjoys the more ethereal side of holiday music. This song is prime driving around at night looking at lights music.
And that’s my other thing about “Above The Northern Lights.” As much as I’m admittedly a total sucker for cold weather and the imagery thereof, it’s never really been a part of the core Christmas experience for me. I mean, I live in The South. We get one show a year, in February. I’ve literally only seen snow on Christmas Day once in my life, and that was a five minute flurry. Instead, the imagery I immediately think of when it comes to Christmas is colorful lights at night. Bright, sparkling strings of color shining out in the dark. I just can’t get enough of that stuff. Look, I watched Tron a LOT as a kid, and it had a profound effect on my aesthetic sensibilities. So the image of flying around over the aurora borealis not only appeals to my scifi geek side, it also taps into a surprisingly under-represented aspect of the Christmas experience. There’s hundreds of songs out there about everything being buried under frozen precipitation, but nowhere near enough odes to entire subdivisions glowing like electric gingerbread houses.
In the interest of maintaining full transparency, I should also admit that I’d also like there to be more covers of “Above The Northern Lights” out there just so I could hear somebody else sing it. Gene Nery’s guest vocals on the Steamroller version aren’t exactly TERRIBLE, but they are pretty… meh. It just sounds like some random dude at karaoke night doing a bad Johnny Mathis impression (on an album that has the ACTUAL Johnny Mathis on another track, just to drive the point home). I just want to hear someone with a real set of pipes tackle this song. Is that so wrong?
1. Oh What A Merry Christmas Day
And at the number one spot, we have the one song where, more than any other, I know EXACTLY the reason it never entered into popular standard status. “Oh What A Merry Christmas Day” was written to be the theme song to Mickey’s Christmas Carol, meaning the song is owned by Disney, and we all know how much The Mouse loves to let other people play with its toys. Apparently there was a brief period in the ‘80s where Disney used it around the parks or on TV as stock Christmas music, and may even have pushed it slightly on radio, but I never caught any of it then and it sure isn’t happening now. Obviously, a company with ambitions as world-eating as Disney wouldn’t like a song that limits itself specifically to Christmas, they’d prefer the more nebulous “holiday” that can be marketed to as many demographics as possible. Even more than that, though, “Oh What A Merry Christmas Day” is just an extremely quaint piece of music. It literally sounds like a music box. These days, any song Disney pushes out to the masses, Christmas or otherwise, will either be a big Broadway showstopper or one of those pop songs the kids today seem to like. They’d never allow themselves to be associate with something so intentionally old fashioned.
But that’s exactly why I love it. This is one of those songs that already sounded like it’d existed for decades the day it was written. It’s SO old fashioned that it’s basically immune to becoming dated, which I think should be the ultimate goal of any aspiring Christmas standard. Yes, it’s another “list of holiday attributes” song, and one could argue that we already have more of those than we’ll ever need, but I still think it does a better job at it than most of the competition. Also, that pretty little melody with full choral harmonies lends itself to plenty of different interpretations. Any a cappella group would make good work of it, a Boston Pops-style orchestral arrangement would be great, and honestly, it could be turned into a pretty decent Broadway showstopper if one were inclined to do so. That big key change going into the final verse is just asking for some diva to show off over it. Again, I know Disney will never loosen its grip on one of its properties enough for it to enter into the public conscious unless it’s at it’s on deliberate command, but “Oh What A Merry Christmas Day” deserves to be there. All of our Christmas playlists would be better off with more of this one floating around.
Congratulations on making it all the way to the end of the blog! Does your soul have cavities from all the sugary sweetness yet? Well, enjoy it while you can, ‘cos I’ll be right back to being a bitter, jaded old nihilist again in just a few days. Crotchety old cartoonist guy is crotchety. I’m gonna have to start talking more about the recent website stuff soon, so you can bet there’s some salt to come. But that can all wait for at least another week. Until then, Merry Christmas!
Comments
Edward VIII
5. Balulalow " ....There’s plenty of choirs out there who still dig it out, and even versions by artists as well known as Sting, Loreena McKennitt, and of all people, Heart...." You missed the most famous performer: AVATAR!! (in the 2014 Christmas special: https://www.smackjeeves.com/discover/detail?titleNo=89199&articleNo=870 ) Does the fact that in a list of obscure songs I've never heard of, the one I recognize is because it was "sung" in a nonexistant Christmas show which didn't actually have audio by an imaginary character, and even then was only identified in the remarks, mean I'm spending too much time reading FOT? Or that everyone else is not spending enough time rereading it?
