First released in 1985, this was undoubtedly the album that put Christmas music back on the map for music listeners and radio stations alike. Prior to this album, you might hear Slade and Wizzard, but you wouldn’t hear much more in the way of Christmas music from previous years. From 1985 onwards, the back catalogue of Christmas music started to become part of the soundtrack of the season. I would argue that you can draw a straight line between this original album and the domination of the songs of Christmas Past that we see due to streaming sites.
The tracklist
Side 1
The album starts off with four bona fide crackers. Do They Know It’s Christmas? had been released the previous year and had sold 3 million copies, so it made sense to start with it for this album. Following that came the 1973 one-two of I Wish it could be Christmas Everyday and Merry Christmas Everybody by Wizzard and Slade respectively. The 1984 runner-up in the chart battle, Last Christmas by Wham comes next to make as powerful a first four as you can imagine. The 1973 also ran, Step into Christmas is Track 5, and despite the recent reappraisal of the song, I still think that it’s original chart position of 25 was absolutely right for a record that didn’t come close to the big two in terms of quality. The fact that it had been largely forgotten in the 12 intervening years was probably fair enough. Mike Oldfield’s In Dulce Jubilo is good fun and the following track was also good fun at the time. As it is Another Rock ‘n’ Roll Christmas by 70s glam rocker Gary Glitter, it can obviously no longer be played, except on a vinyl original. The final two tracks on Side 1 are Wonderful Christmastime by Paul McCartney and Blue Christmas by Shakin’ Stevens. The latter was a Number 2 hit in 1982 at the end of another fantastic year for the Welsh rocker, but it would be completely obliterated in the Christmas playlists just after the release of this album by the magnificent Merry Christmas Everyone.
Side 2
This side is arguably more interesting than the parade of big hitters on Side 1, because it served to reintroduce a number of songs dimly remembered or completely forgotten. It starts off, however, with the catalyst for the revival of the Christmas song in the 70s, Happy Xmas (War is Over) by John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band released in 1972. Famously, both the writing partnership of Jim Lea and Noddy Holder, and Wizzard front man Roy Wood were inspired by listening to this track when they decided to write Christmas songs themselves. Greg Lake’s I Believe in Father Christmas got to Number 2 but had no chance of a Christmas chart topper because of the Bohemian Rhapsody juggernaut in 1975. Despite this, it is one of the most amazing Christmas songs ever recorded and still sounds fresh nearly half a century later. Also released in 1975, but failing to chart was Chris De Burgh’s A Spaceman Came Travelling. I had never heard it before this album came out, but it definitely made a big impression when I did. Stop the Cavalry by Jona Lewie was a huge favourite of mine when it was released in 1980, and one I was very familiar with having bought the single at the time. The biggest oddity of the album was Little St Nick by The Beach Boys, the archetypal purveyors of the summer sound. It’s a fun track in a way, but quality wise I would say its not up to the standard set by the bulk of the tracks on here. The same can be said about Queen’s Thank God Its Christmas, and I say that as a fan, but it has been one of those songs that has gradually grown on me year after year. The Christmas Number Ones of 1974 and 1976, Lonely This Christmas and When A Child is Born are followed by White Christmas, first sung by Bing Crosby in the film Holiday Inn in 1942. It is a final three that match each other perfectly in terms of their tempo and they bring arguably the most influential compilation of the festive season to the close.
Final Reflection
It definitely isn’t the case that this album started my infatuation with Christmas pop music, but it definitely reminded me of the power of these three or four minute songs. The first Christmas with this album, it was barely off of my turntable and when I was listening to Radio 1 it was clear that the influence was starting to be felt with the increase in Christmas singles from previous years being played. Years later it still reminds me why I love Christmas music and why I continue to love it.
I came across this album by accident and decided to take a chance on the combination of two of my favourite things, rock music and Christmas! Well, what could go wrong?
It starts with a lullaby style song called Ghosts of Christmas Eve which sets the story in motion of a young girl looking through boxes in her attic one Christmas. It reminded me a lot of Land of Make Believe by Bucks Fizz, a song I always liked. The next track is a tune called Boughs of Holly, a guitar powered rock treatment of Deck the Halls that sounds like a song that Europe would have produced in the mid 80s. The World That She Sees returns to the girl with another lullaby start but this soon gives way to a Meatloaf style rock opera tune with a chorus that is sung in the style of Michael Ball. Yes, it’s as bonkers as it sounds, and utterly irresistible! The next song is The World That He Sees, a reflection on what the world could be that introduces an air of melancholy into the proceedings.
Midnight Christmas Eve once again gives us a contrast by developing a gentle tune that is effective and quite beautiful in its own way, but which has a Brian May style guitar solo towards the end just because it can. Then The March of the Kings, a French carol, is combined with my favourite, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, in a flurry of electric guitars as the Trans-Siberian very entertainingly continue to throw the kitchen sink at everything. The Three Kings and I goes into Southern Rock and Blues mode because, well why not?! Christmas Canon is the next song, and by this time in the album the use of an actual cannon wouldn’t surprise me! Instead it is an absolutely beautiful version of Pachelbel’s famous canon, with occasional lyrics sung by a children’s choir, which definitely matches any other version I’ve ever heard. We’re back to electric guitar based carol mash ups for the next track, Joy of Man’s Desire and Angels We Have Heard on High although by way of variation the latter is sung gospel style. Find our Way Home is a song about the way we continue to treat Christmas Day as a day apart in our lives in spite of everything else we might be chasing the other 364 days of the year. Appalachian Snowfall returns to the tune of the first song on the album before the rock element kicks in to good effect.
The Music Box completely changes the mood as we hear a woman reflecting on the Christmases she spent with the person she lost during the year. It is a sad and beautiful song that has a real emotional impact. The Snow Came Down continues the very reflective mood although the music is heavier and the vocals are delivered with a Joe Cocker style growl that is very effective. Christmas in the Air starts with a music box style tune that trips lightly across the words before becoming a song of joy to the new year ahead. Dream Child reflects upon the Nativity, but you don’t have to be a believer to be caught up with the lovely lyrics and reflect on why Christmas alone among all the times of year is seen as special. Penultimate track An Angel’s Share has lyrics that may lead you to expect a quiet tune that sounds like a carol you are sure you have heard. Well it is, in amongst the guitars and bells that punctuate the song at regular intervals in the way that The Darkness may well have enjoyed! The final track is Music Box Blues, and it is a suitably baffling end to a bonkers, brilliant and fun Christmas album.
You can find it on Spotify here https://open.spotify.com/album/0ONDwjJpx82SNMqIzwoyJy if my review has whetted your appetite. However, if you decide to stretch to the CD, the insert contains the story of the album written as a Christmas fairy tale, and there are unsung lyrics (in italics) that give more of the story. The extra material definitely gives more context that you would otherwise miss. In this, as in just about everything else, the Trans Siberian Orchestra play by their own rules. The Christmas Attic is definitely a Christmas album unlike any other!
The third in my series of recommendations for children’s entertainment at Christmas focuses on books. One of my pleasures as a parent was sharing books with my children that became firm favourites. The great thing about Christmas was that I could return to books that I loved and that the children loved as well. There were so many to choose from. Every year the reading ‘season’ around Christmas time became longer and longer! I now read my own Christmas books from October, but the children had their Christmas favourites from the latter part of November. Here are three books that I would recommend to any family plus a bonus recommendation from last year I can’t leave out.
Paddington’s Magical Christmas
This is Michael Bond at his best, writing with warmth, charm and humour. It is a proper Christmas treat in every way, and a book that I returned to every Christmas for years. It starts when Mrs. Bird is overheard singing about a partridge in a pear tree, confusing Paddington who cannot see a pear tree anywhere and certainly not one with a partridge. When he hears her, then Mrs Brown and Judy singing about her true love sending her even more items he goes to his friend Mr Gruber who tells him that they have been singing a Christmas song. He then decides to give a present to Paddington that is an absolute delight. It is a fast-paced read that’s great for sharing with your children and, as they get older great for them to read on their own.
My Christmas Treasury
I just loved this book from the first time I saw it in a charity shop and picked it up just because of the cover. It has Christmas songs, the Nativity Story, the Little Match Girl and other traditional stories. It also includes ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas which I read every Christmas Eve without fail. However, at the end of the book there are two stories that became real festive favourites for all of us. Mrs Muddle’s Present Puzzle and The Full House are marvellous original stories that made the children (and me) laugh every time. You will find delights on every page and your children will learn about different aspects of Christmas, religious and secular alike. It is great fun to dip in to and great fun to read every year.
Another Night Before Christmas
This is the other story that became a Christmas Eve staple in our house. Written by the former poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy it is a very clever updating of the story with references to television and cash points amongst other things. It deals with elements of belief, consumer culture and eventually magic. The illustrations by Marc Boutavant are full of lovely details that the children loved exploring on their own after I read it to them. It amazes me that it hasn’t become more widely known and been more widely loved by parents and children. You really need to give it a read if you have children of any age, because I can guarantee they will love it.
Merry Christmas Sleepover Club
I recommended this last year, but I have no hesitation in including this as a bonus book in this list. The Sleepover Club is a series of books about five girls from Cuddington near Leicester who form the club of the title and whose adventures eventually filled over 50 books and served as the inspiration for two series on Australian Television. This book, the only Christmas themed book, is a treat for older and younger children alike. It is based around the school panto that the girls get involved in and has a couple of subplots that revolve around a parent of one of the girls dating again, and the mystery of who is stealing food from donations to the homeless. It is tightly written, entertaining, very funny and even a little sad in places as the five girls get into their usual scrapes. The set piece finale is heart-warming and satisfying as is the resolution of the subplots. It is a perfect book for the middle of December when you don’t really want to read another story about the big day itself. As an introduction to Rosie, Frankie, Kenny, Lyndz and Fliss it is pretty much perfect and the Christmas theme made it my personal favourite.
So there you go. Four books that really make the seasonal bedtime stories magical and are perfect for sharing year after year.
As every family grows, certain elements of Christmas become, for a while at least, traditions that are kept up from year to year. This is especially true of the Christmas TV programmes and films that come out every year. They are comforting in many cases, and they give the whole family the warm feeling that comes from shared memories and shared enjoyment. There are various DVDs (or videos back in the day)that were given an airing every year as the children grew up. They may not necessarily be played any more, but just the sight of them as I flick through the DVD collection brings a rush of nostalgia.
I have deliberately avoided the obvious Christmas staples like the original cartoon version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Polar Express, The Santa Clause and The Snowman to concentrate instead on three much less familiar Christmas offerings. They may be available on DVD still, or they may be on YouTube, but they are all very much worth considering.
The Bestest Present
A gorgeous film from the world of For Better or For Worse
When I lived in Japan, I took over the flat that went with my job from my predecessor. Luckily for me, she left some of Lynn Johnston’s For Better or For Worse collections in the bookcase. At a loose end one day I picked up one of the books, never having heard of the series that never made it to the UK. Well, within a few pages, I was completely hooked. Over the years I collected all the collections, only giving them to charity when I started to upgrade to the complete collection series of hardbacks.
Now, a number of years ago I found out that the For Better or For Worse series had been made into a series of specials with The Bestest Present being the Christmas one. I bought it from Lynn’s website where you can still get it, and the whole family just loved it. Elly and John Patterson, the parents, take daughter Elizabeth to a big department store for Christmas shopping. Here she loses her beloved soft toy, which threatens to completely spoil Christmas for the whole family. The usual mix of comedy, sadness and thought provoking reflections on Christmas are all taken from the amazing source material to create a completely new story that will appeal to fans of the Pattersons, and those who have never heard of them, alike. It is one of those that I can still put on for myself because the beauty and simplicity of the story appeals to parents and, perhaps, affects them more.
Santa’s Bumper Christmas
Three songs bought to life in cartoon form
The three cartoons on this DVD are simply animated and built around three songs, White Christmas, Twelve Days of Christmas and Santa Claus is Coming to Town. The first of the three was never particularly popular, although it could happily play in the background. Twelve Days of Christmas is huge fun as an initially gruff and sceptical father will not let a young man marry his daughter unless he collects everything from the song, the Twelve Days of Christmas! Some of the 12 gifts required some very lateral thinking, but as he worked his way through the list he got more confident, until just one piece of the song proved elusive. It becomes very much a task that you are hoping the young man will complete. Some years this had three or four plays, so popular was it. The final cartoon Santa Claus is Coming to Town is probably the pick of the three with probably the most unexpected storyline that got very emotional at times. I won’t spoil it, but it is an absolute gem. Ignore the fact that the animation is very old-fashioned and just lose yourself in the stories.
Father Christmas
Raymond Briggs on superb form yet again.
Although nowhere near as popular as The Snowman, Raymond Briggs partially connected follow-up Father Christmas, is a superb piece of film making in its own right. It creates the marvellous character of a grumpy Father Christmas, superbly voiced by Mel Smith in the British version, who decides that one year he is just going to get away from everything and treat himself to a long overdue holiday. He goes to many places around the world including Las Vegas, France and Scotland, only moving on when he has had enough or when someone has recognised him. We are used to a permanently happy Father Christmas, so his occasional irritations with the world around him is refreshing and very funny. We do see his deliveries on the big night, but even they don’t quite go as expected. It’s a great story with bracing humour and a central character who refuses to fit in to the conventional mould. The children were always highly amused by his continual use of the word ‘Bloomin’ and by his general demeanour. Even now, I can watch it myself and find huge pleasure from such a well-crafted cartoon.
So, there you go. Three Christmas offerings that may be entirely unfamiliar to you and your children, but shows that have stood the test of time with us and may very well stand the test of time with your family. Happy viewing!
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.‘
David Pearce - Popular Culture and Personal Passions 