Musical ambitions that extend well beyond their seasonal assignment
By definition, you’d expect any song that self-identifies as “Christmas Music” would stay in its lane.
Proper holiday songs should adhere to the job description, and then clear out without a fuss.
99% of “Christmas Songs™” exist purely to perform a seasonal function. It’s sonic tinsel, meant to be displayed briefly and then packed away with the lights that half-work next year.
But once in a while, if you can manage to ignore the stereotypical sleighbells and forced rhymes with “mistletoe,” you can discover a diamond in the wreath.
When it comes to a recordings that transcend a their holiday-centric Christmas themes, I use a simple metric: If I find myself humming it in March? It’s earned a special privilege.
They sneak past my defenses, and I catch myself liking them:
Even after my sad, needle-shedding tree has long since been composted.
Here are four Christmas songs that don’t need Christmas to justify their quality. As their holiday angle fades, the songcraft takes the wheel. Using my own unscientific ranking system, let’s have a look, countdown style:
4. “Last Christmas”
I’ve made the jokes. I’ve rolled my eyes. And more often than not, I’ve changed the station or hit the skip button.
Not to pile on here, but really:
- It’s singsongy
- There’s no bridge
- The “Special, “Special” is a little too twee
- And it’s overplayed – to Mariah levels.
Up until last week, I would not have considered putting it on this list. So I surprised myself when I went down a YouTube rabbit hole last week, researching isolated vocals.
This revelation popped up. And cracked the code for me.
That’s pretty special (special), right there. There’s no denying that it is an excellent performance. And it was enough to makes me reconsider my position on this record.
George Michael wrote and produced it himself, reportedly in a single sitting. An example of a rare pop instinct or a reminder not to overwork a good idea.
His vocal is velvet control: wounded but dignified, a combination pop music rarely attempts.
My heart grew three times that day, when I stopped to consider the positive aspects.
“Last Christmas” works as a perfectly engineered pop lament. The melody rises just enough to suggest hope before folding back into regret.
Here’s a thought experiment: Lose the sleighbells and change the title. Swap “Christmas” for “April.” Or “September.” Nothing collapses. The song survives intact as a meditation on romantic embarrassment and delayed self-respect.
Evergreen. Just not in the Tannenbaum way.
3. “Christmas Time Is Here” — Vince Guaraldi Trio
This one almost feels like cheating.
Think of your favorite jazz standard. Most of the time, these create their own category of permanence.
They don’t chase relevance; they wait for it to happen organically. I’ve always trusted music that’s willing to do that.
“Christmas Time Is Here” is a quiet, minor (or for you musical purists, a major-seventh) miracle.
The melody is fragile yet easily revisitable. Guaraldi’s contemplative and patient piano sounds like it’s thinking out loud. The rhythm section hovers, leaving space rather than filling it. It’s music content to be ignored until you’re ready.
Guaraldi wrote it as an instrumental for the 1965 classic A Charlie Brown Christmas television special; the lyrics came later.
Its power lies in ambiguity: warmth, yes, but also melancholy. Reflection. A sense that joy is temporary and therefore precious. It sounds like a quiet room after the guests leave, when the lights are still on but the noise is gone.
Played on a warm summer night, the melody doesn’t feel wrong, just reflective. Like a song about time itself, not the date on the calendar.
2. “I Believe in Father Christmas”
If the other songs slip past the holiday label, this one confronts it directly and asks the follow-up questions.
I was a big fan of Emerson Lake and Palmer in the 1970s, and so when I saw this in the record store window, I snapped up the 45, having never before listened to the song.
“I Believe in Father Christmas” isn’t cozy. It’s solemn, almost austere. The melody is hymn-like, the progression older than pop radio. Lake’s vocal is plainspoken and resolute.
Lyrically, it’s a reckoning: innocence examined, faith tested, belief weighed against experience. Lake isn’t celebrating Christmas so much as putting it under cross examination.
As a kid, I found this confusing and faintly inconvenient. As an adult, I find it bracing.
Musically, the track is disciplined to severity. No excess, no sentimentality. Even the borrowed Prokofiev melody is used to proper effect.
Remove the sleighbells and the references to Christmas, and what remains is a song about growing up; about learning that myths can comfort and mislead in equal measure. That isn’t seasonal; it’s permanent.
The song was criticized for being too bleak for Christmas radio, which now feels less like a misstep, and more like the entire point.
1. “Christmas Wrapping” — The Waitresses
On paper, “Christmas Wrapping” should be unbearable.
A talk-sung narrative about missed connections, retail drudgery, and ironic optimism over jittery new-wave funk? In December?
With a meet-cute?
I would have bet against it confidently, and then avoided eye contact later. And yet: from the musicianship, to it’s quirky wholesomeness, to a solid production: it’s perfect.
What makes it endure past December 26 is its absolute commitment to the groove. The bass line is complex yet nimble. The drums push forward without rushing, and the whole thing moves like a city street at dusk: busy, fluorescent, slightly irritated, but very much alive.
Patty Donahue’s vocal is conversational without being careless. You root for her every time she puts her boots back on, or suffers one of life’s minor, yet totally annoying inconveniences.
Beleaguered? Absolutely. But she dutifully keeps trying and doesn’t give up.
The lyrics are sharp, funny, and quietly humane. It’s a song about disappointment that refuses to wallow. About adulthood as a series of near-misses that somehow still add up.
Strip away the Christmas-party references and you’re left with something sturdier: a pop song about endurance. About showing up.
It’s about holding out hope something is going to surprise you, if you’ll only just try to look around the next corner.
The band reportedly wrote and recorded the song during an August heat wave, which explains why it feels less like yuletide cheer and more like urban survival.
The common thread here isn’t sleigh bells or snowfall. It’s seriousness of intent.
Each song treats songwriting as craft, not occasion. There’s something more going on. It’s obvious that they’re going to get the attention once a year, between Black Friday and New Year’s Eve.
But if you’ll allow me a bit of imagined personification:
I like to think that they wait patiently the other 44 weeks of the year, for someone to notice they were never just Christmas songs at all.
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