A brand new, animated video for Greg Lake's perennial seasonal favourite, I Believe In Father Christmas, has been released.
Co-written with former King Crimson lyricist Peter Sinfield, who had moved on to work with Emerson Lake & Palmer, Lake's song took a damning view of the commercialisation of Christmas, although as his YouTube channel, where the video was shared, states that gthe song has "decade after decade, been recognized by fans for its timeless message of peace and unity during the holiday season."
The new video echoes those sentiments, with a young boy in awe of Christmas, even watching Lake's original video for the song on televisions in a shop window, before, as an adult, he notices how things have changed. But don't worry, it's Christmas, so there's a happy ending!
Lake penned the song after Keith Emerson had encouraged each member of the band to come up with solo material for the upcoming Works album, so in 1975 Lake teamed up with lyricist Sinfield to create something out of a “Christmassy” chord sequence Lake had written. At Emerson's suggestion they added a snippet of Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kijé Suite, summoning the sparkle of Christmas, creating, as Sinfield has said, “a picture-postcard Christmas, with morbid edges."
The single was originally a hit worldwide in 1975, reaching Number 2 in the UK charts and selling over 13,000 copies in two days only to be kept from the UK number one slot by Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. The original video was shot partly on the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt and in the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. The original video was restored to 4K back in 2020, after a rare copy of the original film was discovered.
