You may have noticed every year around this time, as you're walking through a store, flipping through the radio, or at a holiday party, that the songs playing are the same you’ve heard in years prior. The school held its Winter Concert this month on the 14th, among the songs played are Silver Bells, Baby, It’s Cold Outside, and Jingle Bell Rock, all songs long familiar to the public (there were other, less familiar tunes performed however). It’s rare that there are any notable changes to the Christmas song canon; we hear the same songs every year, to some people’s chagrin and to other’s delight - Why is this?
You may have noticed every year around this time, as you’re walking through a store, flipping through the radio, or at a holiday party, that the songs playing are the same you’ve heard in years prior. The school held its Winter Concert this month on the 14th, among the songs played are Silver Bells, Baby, It’s Cold Outside, and Jingle Bell Rock, all songs long familiar to the public (there were other, less familiar tunes performed however). It’s rare that there are any notable changes to the Christmas song canon; we hear the same songs every year, to some people’s chagrin and to other’s delight – Why is this?
The birth of the modern Christmas song, and much of modern holiday culture, came out of WWII, when soldiers overseas were homesick and nostalgic. For the first time, production companies found it profitable to invest in holiday-specific productions. The song credited with initiating the rush of Christmas songs is Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” sung by Bing Crosby in the 1942 film “Holiday Inn”. The wistful, warm, and nostalgic tone of the piece and performance thereof captured the hearts and ears of all those dealing with the harsh reality of war. The commercial success of “White Christmas” and “Holiday Inn” brought on a wave of like productions over the next few decades. In this period (~1940-1960) we got almost all of our Christmas classic songs. Songs like “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, “Jingle Bell Rock”, “Silver Bells”, and “I’ll Be Home For Christmas”.
Almost all of these songs portrayed a romantic image of Christmas – one that could be, and would be highly sentimentalized. They painted a picture of timeless nostalgia with lyrics like “Just like the ones I used to know” (White Christmas) and “Tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago” (It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year) looking back at a time that was simpler and thus better, even if this time never existed. This meant that the songs themselves took on a sentimental value for many that would linger for generations. It is my theory that because the holidays are such a sentimentalized time, and these songs have been a fixture in popular culture for so long, they have entered a sort of nostalgic loop that allows them to stay in the public ear for much longer than other pop songs. One generation will hear the songs during the holidays of their childhood, become nostalgic for them, and play them either intentionally or unintentionally for the next generation, and the loop starts again.
All this means that it takes a particularly exceptional contemporary song to break into the Christmas canon. According to The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, of the top 30 most-played holiday songs, only five were from the 70’s onward, and there were none more recent than 1995. Among these five songs are “Wonderful Christmastime” by Paul McCartney, “Last Christmas” by George Michael, and yes, Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You.” The point being that all of these are exceptional examples of pop songs, getting ranked 29th, 9th, and 1st on the Billboard Hot 100 respectively at their peak.
It seems as though the reason that the music we hear during the holidays doesn’t change is – that we don’t want it to. Every year contemporary artists come out with new holiday albums or singles, and before long, they are mostly forgotten about, leaving only the very best to survive. Meanwhile, there is a sizable catalogue of music from the mid 20th century that holds sentimental places in many people’s hearts. And so it appears as though holiday music is one (slightly anachronistic) corner of popular culture that is unlikely to change anytime soon.
Sources:
“‘Santa Claus Is Coming to Town’ Is Most-Played Holiday Song of the Last 50 Year” ASCAP November 16, 2016 – https://www.ascap.com/press/2016/11-21-top-holiday-songs
Friedwald, Will. “The Song That Changed Christmas Forever” Wall Street Journal, October 4, 2016 – https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-song-that-changed-christmas-forever-1475617510
Harvey, Eric. “Why the Christmas-Song Canon Has a Baby-Boomer Bias” The Atlantic, December 21, 2011 – https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/12/why-the-christmas-song-canon-has-a-baby-boomer-bias/250344/
Banton, Lawrence. Larkin, Ali “Why Almost All Christmas Music Is From the 1940s and 1950s” Cheddar, December 19, 2020 – https://cheddar.com/media/why-almost-all-christmas-music-1940s-1950s
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