Children’s Christmas music

For most children of the 70s and 80s, children’s Christmas music meant carols at school and, for those of us with even longer memories, taking a stab at unfamiliar Christmas songs from around the world courtesy of the Autumn term songs of Singing Together. There was very little Christmas music specifically aimed at us, so we tended to listen to the Christmas songs in the charts. When our children were growing up, however, Christmas music for children was an established genre of its own. As a lover of all things Christmas, I was determined to introduce our children to all sorts of Christmas music, and at its best, children’s Christmas music rivalled anything else in the whole Christmas cannon. The photos accompanying this article are of CDs from our own collection, but in this era of streaming, you are bound to be able to find these on any streaming site or perhaps in YouTube.

Santa’s Rockin’ by The Wiggles

The OG’s of children’s music produce a classic for all ages

The best group in the entire history of children’s music is a toss up between British contenders The Wombles and Australian primary school music kings, The Wiggles. Quality wise there is nothing to choose between them, and they both produced songs that appealed to all ages. Mike Batt was, and remains to this day, one of the great pop music writers of all time, producing perfect homages to every imaginable style of music. Greg (Yellow), Murray (Red), Jeff (Purple) and Anthony (Blue) combined experience of playing in bands (Jeff and Anthony played in Australian band The Cockroaches) with a background of training in pre-school education at Macquarie University in Sydney (where Anthony met Greg and Murray). In 1991 they recorded an album for very young children which became so successful that they decided to follow their musical path full time. They ended up being the most successful music act in Australia for 4 successive years having broken the notoriously difficult American market. They have sold 23 million DVDs, 7 million CDs and have played to an average of 1 million people a year across a 30 year career!

Santa’s Rockin’ was their 20th album, released at the end of 2004. It is a combination of traditional carols, original songs and comic interludes that is absolutely irresistible to children young and old! They call in some heavy duty guest stars, chief of which is John Fogerty, former lead singer of the legendary Creedance Clearwater Revival who joins them on two songs including the brilliant Great Big Man in Red, a real highlight in a high quality album. Australian music legend Ross Wilson sings perhaps the best track, This Little Baby is Born Again, a truly gorgeous reflection on the meaning of Christmas. Finally, Barry Williams, who some 70s kids might know as Greg Brady in The Brady Bunch takes vocal duties on Wags Stop Your Barking. The quality is astonishingly high throughout and I happily listen to this even now that my children are grown up.

Phineas and Ferb Holiday Favourites

Festive tracks from the platypus and his pals

I was first introduced to Phineas and Ferb by my children and it fast became one of my TV obsessions. It is an incredibly clever, densely layered cartoon with cultural references from the 60s onwards, great one liners, excellent stories and marvellous characters. Phineas and Ferb themselves are 10 year olds who spend their time inventing incredibly complex, occasionally reality altering machines. Aren’t they a little young to be inventors? Yes, yes they are! Their older sister Candace spends almost every episode trying to bust them to their parents with very little success. The family pet, Perry the Platypus is actually a secret agent who spends his time thwarting the plans of Dr. Doofenshmirtz whose attempts to wreak havoc are always doomed to failure and often bail Phineas and Ferb out of trouble as they cause their inventions to disappear! If you’ve never seen it, then please give it a go. You will definitely thank me, whether you have children or not. YouTube in particular is a great place to start as pretty much all of the songs are available on there.

Central to Phineas and Ferb’s appeal are the beautifully crafted songs that pastiche every imaginable style. Their Christmas album is no exception. Starting with Winter Vacation, the festive counterpart to their ordinary theme tune, performed by Bowling for Soup, the soundtrack album is fantastic fun. Highlights include That Christmas Feeling by Olivia Olson, who became famous in festive favourite, Love Actually as Joanna, Sam’s classmate who sang the amazing version of All I Want for Christmas is You. In a further festive connection, her character Vanessa Doofenshmirtz catches the eye of Ferb, the very quiet character played by Thomas Brodie-Sangster, who was also Sam in Love Actually! Dr Doofenshmirtz sings the song I Really don’t hate Christmas as he bemoans the lack of a tortured backstory to explain his attempt to ruin Christmas! The second half of the album contains familiar Christmas songs sung by the characters from the series, including the gloriously named Love Handel, a 70s soft rock style group who are much influenced by groups such as REO Speedwagon. Their version of Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town is great fun.

The Snowman Narrated by Bernard Cribbins

The legend of Jackanory entrances children and takes adults back to their childhood

This could have been a very short piece about this particular piece of magic. I could just have written ‘IT’S GOT BERNARD CRIBBINS’ and many of you would have been straight onto your streaming site to find it. However, it deserves and requires a slightly deeper dive into the CD, so here goes. The first three tracks feature the original wordless cartoon given warm, comforting narration by Cribbins in his classic relaxed avuncular style. You don’t need pictures, because you will have seen the cartoon often enough to know virtually every single frame – or perhaps that’s just me! What Bernard Cribbins always did was to infuse the words with his own special magic, and here that magic reaches the level of sorcery. If you think you know The Snowman and can get nothing more from it, then allow the first half of this album to prove you wrong. The second half of the album is the original soundtrack on its own, and the beauty of the music is allowed to shine through. In the middle of each set of three tracks is the original version of Walking in the Air sung by Peter Auty. It is an absolutely beautiful experience, the equal of the original cartoon.

If you have children you may well want to search these three albums out, and if you haven’t, well why should that make any difference?! Go on, treat yourself, because as Charles Dickens observed in A Christmas Carol,

‘For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.‘