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.‘
Older readers of this blog might think back to their childhood Christmases and remember church services, particularly the Christingle service, carolling in the local area, singing in the school carol concert and hearing them on radio and television at regular intervals during December. For example, on Blue Peter, the final programme before Christmas used to finish with a choir and the presenters singing Christmas carols. Although they may not be so common now, Christmas carols are for many, young and old, still the real sound of Christmas.
Where do carols come from?
Originally, carols were simply religious songs that could be attached to any time of the year. They started to become specifically associated with Christmas sometime around the 17th or 18th century. At least that’s the best guess, but to be honest nobody knows exactly when that happened. Many carols have been completely lost to the mists of history, and some have had earlier words set to later tunes, for example ‘While Shepherd’s Watched Their Flocks By Night’. Perhaps the earliest carol with both tune and words intact is ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ or ‘Adeste Fideles’ in Latin. ‘The Holly and the Ivy’ may have a much earlier history than any of the others given the fact that both plants played important roles in the pagan celebration of the Winter Solstice in pre-Christian times. The verses reflect the appropriation of pagan culture by associating the Nativity to those two plants. Clearly, then, the apparently simple songs of praise are the result of a long and complex history.
Favourite Christmas carols
Everyone will have favourite carols, but I will introduce you to my Top 5. They are my favourites for a variety of reasons, but what they have in common is that hearing them is like hearing a distillation of the whole season.
God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen
This was the carol that became inextricably linked with the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, mainly due to a small incident in the first stave of the book where a young carol singer starts to sing at the door of Scrooge’s office, only to be chased off by an irate Scrooge with a ruler! In the first version I saw, the Richard Williams cartoon, the tune of God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen was a powerful motif that captured my imagination. It’s a marvellous tune with evocative words and a regularly misunderstood title. You may have noticed the important comma. That is because it means God make you mighty, gentlemen in old English. It is a prayer for determination and an exhortation to keep the faith. Perhaps the best version is the instrumental treatment in Victor Hely-Hutchinson’s Carol Symphony.
Once in Royal David’s City
For many people, me included, the sound of the single chorister singing the first verse of this carol on Christmas Eve in Carols from King’s is the real start of Christmas itself. An interesting fact about the soloist is that there is a choice of three boys who are told to be ready to sing. Just before the choir enter the chapel the musical director points to one of the three boys who then delivers the solo. When the whole congregation joins in, it is a marvellous communal experience, one that definitely benefits from the hushed congregation listening to one voice singing that first verse beforehand.
In The Bleak Midwinter
As a child, this was one of the carols I loved to sing because of the beautiful words. The descriptive power of ‘Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone’ always struck me as particularly resonant. I suppose it fits in with my love of lyrics that I have had from my earliest days of listening to music. The other important aspect was the tune, which I just loved. When I first heard it with the alternative tune, seemingly more popular these days, it didn’t have anything like the same appeal, and to this day I only sing along with the version I first heard and loved. Here is a gorgeous version from the fantastic Christmas album sung by the Canterbury Cathedral Girls’ Choir.
I Saw Three Ships
For anyone who loves the sea, this carol is definitely a favourite. I feel as though it has a sea shanty style tune, albeit more muted, but is believed to have originated in landlocked Derbyshire! It dates from the 17th Century, but the familiar words weren’t added until 1833 by William Sandys. There are nine verses in the full version and they follow the journey of Christ and Mary as they sail into Bethlehem – 20 miles away from any body of water! However, the ships of the title may refer to camels, known as ‘ships of the desert’. Whatever the truth of the matter, it is an eminently singable carol, but one that is very different from the other carols that we are familiar with. For that reason it is a very welcome addition to any carol service.
Hark the Herald Angels Sing
Leaving the best till last is the way to go, and Hark The Herald Angels is the best carol of the lot. Why? It has the fantastic tune by Mendelssohn and marvellous lyrics by Charles Wesley, updated by George Whitefield, but the other four I’ve mentioned also have great tunes and strong lyrics. It is the best because it is the carol that you can really ‘belt out’! The enthusiasm of a congregation in any carol service definitely goes up a notch as soon as this carol is announced. It is a carol that rewards enthusiasm, not just ability, which puts it above other carols like O Come All Ye Faithful for me. I know many of you might disagree, but I will never be dissuaded from that point of view.
I hope you have enjoyed my choices. If you have a favourite Carol I haven’t mentioned, then why not tell me in the comments. Happy listening and singing!
Following on from yesterday’s choice of five favourite Christmas songs, I now turn to Christmas hits. They are the tracks that were nothing to do with Christmas but which have that festive quality. They might be reflective songs, or they might be party tunes, but whatever they are you can’t imagine the festive season without them. As with yesterday, they are not necessarily the pinnacle of the Christmas hit, but they are tracks that I love to listen to during the festive season.
A classic Rock ‘n’ Roll track from Leicester’s finest
In 1976, one song was positioning itself to be the Christmas Number One, having already been at the top for 3 weeks. It was from the eight piece band who had more hits than any other UK act in the 1970s. Yes, it’s the brilliant Showaddywaddy, who were occasionally considered unfashionable for their 50s style clothing and glam reworking of old hits. I, however, would never hear a word against them from their first appearance on New Faces, and in the mid to late 70s they were unchallenged as my favourite group. They came to the Central Hall in Chatham every year, and every year I went along. Under the Moon of Love was, and is, a festive party classic. What happened in the chart race? Oh yes, When a Child is Born happened! It took me years before I forgave Johnny Mathis for stealing the Christmas Number One from under their noses. https://youtu.be/mDvsaMqQVvQ?si=ByfHlIKiBPOtmVk8
Paul’s Pop Pinnacle? Possibly!
Everyone knows that in 1984, the Christmas charts were a procession with Band Aid outselling everyone by 2 to 1 at least. Last Christmas by Wham was, at the time, the biggest selling Number 2 single ever. Shakin’ Stevens even quietly shelved Merry Christmas Everyone when he saw the competition to give himself a clear run for the following year! The Number 3 record that year was also the biggest selling Number 3 record ever, and it had a real magic to it. Paul McCartney’s song with the Frog Chorus, We All Stand Together, divides opinion like few other records in his career. However, for me it was simply a song that could appeal to anyone’s inner child at Christmas. I remember playing it at a house party that year, and hearing everyone singing along. We were in our teens but we definitely found our inner children thanks to the alchemy of the one and only Paul McCartney.
It’s a Slade song, but not the one you might be expecting!
In 1983, Slade looked odds on for their second festive chart topper, but in a very close battle they lost out to the brilliant Only You by The Flying Pickets. As I loved both songs I didn’t care who won the battle, but I would love to have seen both get the Number One they so richly deserved. My Oh My was a perfect festive singalong that could be heard being belted out in church halls, house parties and pubs throughout the Christmas season. You didn’t need to dance, you just swayed in time to the music holding aloft, usually, imaginary scarves. It is a song of reflection, togetherness and optimism, so it was a perfect Christmas hit and would have been a worthy Christmas chart topper in its own right.
A pachyderm inspired punk classic!
In December 1984, the big dance craze wherever I went was the pogo. It was the result of one song, whose far more restrained original version had me singing along on Junior choice over a decade earlier. Nellie the Elephant was a frightfully posh song with immaculate vowels and complete restraint. When punk band The Toy Dolls got hold of it, the verses were delivered with similar restraint, but the chorus became a frenetic thrash which was frankly impossible to dislike. I had had a very hard time in my first few weeks in the RAF, so this was a cathartic release of energy, frustration and anger. Altogether now ‘Oooooooooooohhhhhhh’!
A Beatles inspired ballad that sounds like a Christmas classic
My final choice brings the tempo back down as I finish with Freiheit, a German band and their single Keeping the Dream Alive from 1988. Like Gilbert O’Sullivan’s Christmas song, I was sure this would be in the mix for Christmas Number 1. Like summer hit Beach Baby by First Class, I convinced myself it was at least Top 10 if not Top 5, where in fact, 14 was its highest chart position. At the time, many listeners swore it was Paul McCartney under a pseudonym, and when you listen you can understand that. It has that air of melancholy that fits the season so well, but it also swells the heart as the chorus kicks in and the singing is simply beautiful. It is another brilliant track that did not get the success it deserved, but it always reminds me of Christmas whenever I hear it.
So there you have it, five more festive songs that, although not about Christmas, very much belong in the seasonal mix of memories we all have when we look back to our younger days. Hope you rediscovered an old favourite or discovered a new one.
So, what is a Christmas song? My definition can be found at the start of the entries I wrote on Christmas Singles of the 1970s and 1980s for h2g2 The 70s entry is here and links to the 80s entry. Happy reading!
You can find every detail you ever wanted about Christmas hits, but for this entry I am simply going to concentrate on five Christmas songs ranging from the instantly familiar to the much more obscure. I hope you will take a listen to the tracks, especially if you don’t know one or two of them. These aren’t necessarily the best five Christmas songs in my extremely wide collection, but they are five songs that I really enjoy for a variety of reasons.
A 70s classic that stands the test of time
To be honest I could have chosen any number of songs from the first heyday of the Christmas record. However, as I have mentioned (on more than one occasion!) I am a die-hard Wombles fan. For that reason, much as I like Slade, Wizzard and Mud, it is to Mike Batt’s furry phenomenon that I look for my first song. It is a song that has as uplifting a chorus as any Christmas classic, a fantastic sax solo and lyrics that are shot through with an air of longing. This is not a hastily thrown together kids song, but a lovingly crafted homage to the season that epitomises Mike Batt’s brilliance.
https://youtu.be/AcQ-2CX4w1Y?si=doqFUVQ_Cug21EAo
A Christmas song full of meaning
The same year as The Wombles reached the Top 5, there was a song that captivated me as a nine year old and continues to capture my heart every year. It is called The Christmas Song, but perhaps is better known by its lyrics, ‘I’m not dreaming of a white Christmas’. Gilbert O’Sullivan had already had two number ones and a number of other Top 10 hits, so when this beautiful record came out, it looked like a certain contender for the Christmas Number 1. Bafflingly, the public decided to consign it to the mid-teens in the Christmas chart and a very undeserved obscurity. If you take a listen you will realise this is a song that has an almost ethereal quality and which speaks to the listener anew, particularly this Christmas.
An all time classic of love and loss from the 80s
My third choice is another beauty from the prolific Mike Batt. I had always thought that A Winter’s Tale was a hit at Christmas rather than a fully fledged Christmas song. However, when I went to the Mike Batt concert at the Bush Hall he mentioned that this massive David Essex hit was always a Christmas song despite never mentioning Christmas. You can’t get a more authoritative statement than that, so it is a Christmas song and earns its place in this list rather than tomorrow’s list. As always, the tune has a melancholy beauty that few other composers can match. The lyrics are achingly beautiful and David Essex’s performance is simply sublime. When I hear it every year its beauty and poignancy affect me anew. It is an amazing track that is 40 years old but sounds as fresh as ever.
A cover version that surpasses the original
In the 1980s, one of my favourite groups were the Welsh rock band The Alarm. They were one of the most unlikely bands to venture into the Christmas market, but for their fantastic greatest hits collection, Standards (a must listen by the way, especially if you don’t know how brilliant they are) they re-recorded Happy Christmas (War is Over) originally released by John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band. Mike Peters made a great job of lead vocals, but what lifted this version way above the original was the Welsh Male Voice Choir to replace the discordant children on Lennon’s version. It gives the whole song a huge touch of class. Take a listen and I pretty much guarantee you that it will become your new favourite version.
A modern favourite with that 70s twist
Cats in Space are one of the best rock bands in the UK at the moment, not that you would know about them unless you are a die hard rock fan. They are a six piece band who bring Queen, ELO, Sweet, Slade and a whole host of other bands together in their songs but they do it in a way that makes their own sound. They have released two Christmas songs, a cover of I Believe in Father Christmas in 2021 and their self penned My Kind of Christmas the year before. My Kind of Christmas is an absolute joy, full of 70s references and the spirit of Christmas in abundance. Listen to it 2 or 3 times and you are bound to be singing along with the chorus!
I hope you enjoy at least a couple of these tracks and that you have a Christmas full of fun and music.
David Pearce - Popular Culture and Personal Passions 