\n<\/p>\n
I have Phoebe Bridgers to thank for this one: It was her pick<\/a> last year in her annual Christmas covers series. I\u2019d never heard the original, and when I went back to check it out, I found that I actually preferred it to Bridgers\u2019s more mournful rendition. Her version of this ballad of seasonal alcoholism is an out-and-out tear-jerker, but the Handsome Family manage to tell the same story with some dark comic relief. (Listen on YouTube<\/a>)<\/p>\n I believe it was my colleague Joe Coscarelli who, on an episode of Popcast, came up with one of my favorite Taylor Swift conspiracy theories: That \u201cEvermore,\u201d her second and decidedly more wintry 2020 album, was originally supposed to be a Christmas-themed release. This finely wrought ode to hometown what-ifs and temporarily rekindled romance is probably the strongest argument for that case. (Listen on YouTube<\/a>)<\/p>\n Here\u2019s another song about regressing at one\u2019s parents\u2019 house for a long weekend, a curiously season-specific track on the 1975\u2019s excellent 2022 album \u201cBeing Funny in a Foreign Language.\u201d I often appreciate the details in Matty Healy\u2019s writing, and there are some particularly vivid ones here: a precocious, vegan sister; a fleece that doesn\u2019t warm as well as advertised; a mother with a sore back who objects to being mentioned in the song. \u201cI just came for the stuffing, not to argue about nothing,\u201d Healy sings. \u201cBut mark my words, I\u2019ll be home on the 23rd.\u201d (Listen on YouTube<\/a>)<\/p>\n Written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein for the 1959 Broadway production \u201cThe Sound of Music,\u201d \u201cMy Favorite Things\u201d didn\u2019t begin life as a holiday song. Julie Andrews performed it on a 1961 Christmas special, though, and since then its mentions of mittens, snowflakes and brown paper packages tied up with strings have made it sound at home on many a Christmas album \u2014 including Barbra Streisand<\/a>\u2019s. (Listen on YouTube<\/a>)<\/p>\n Speaking of famous Jews singing are-they-really-Christmas songs, the endlessly over-covered<\/a>, richly poetic, mordantly hilarious \u201cHallelujah\u201d is in so many ways one of the most misunderstood songs in popular culture \u2014 so of course<\/em> some people have turned it into a holiday standard. But as Stereogum\u2019s Chris DeVille wrote<\/a> in a 2019 essay, vehemently and correctly, \u201cWhatever context it belongs in, Christmas ain\u2019t it.\u201d (Listen on YouTube<\/a>)<\/p>\n This is probably the only true<\/em> Christmas song on the list, but it\u2019s certainly an unconventional one \u2014 and of course I had to include it in honor of the Pogues\u2019 Shane MacGowan<\/a>, who died last week. Over the weekend, Rob Tannenbaum (a journalist with a very appropriate name for this purpose) published a fascinating piece<\/a> about the making of the song, and the push to send it to the top of the charts in the United Kingdom. Might \u201cFairytale\u201d be the next Christmas song to belatedly hit No. 1? (Listen on YouTube<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n5. Taylor Swift: \u201c\u2019Tis the Damn Season\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
6. The 1975: \u201cWintering\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
7. Barbra Streisand: \u201cMy Favorite Things\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
8. Leonard Cohen: \u201cHallelujah\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
9. The Pogues featuring Kirsty MacColl: \u201cFairytale of New York\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n