DJ play a Christmas song/ I wanna be dancing all night long,” commands Cher on the first single from her new festive album: Christmas. Yes, Christmas is coming, which means Christmas adverts, Christmas films and Christmas albums. It feels only right that Cher is getting in on the act. And, OK, “DJ Play a Christmas Song” is a tacky kind of number. The electro pulse strung through it feels off the peg. But the 77-year-old singer knows how to sell a line. By the time she tells us that “The red and the green lights/ Are hitting me just right”, I imagine we’re all in. Cher has been making records since 1965, making her feel like family to most of us. And Christmas, after all, is the time when even the musically snobby households cast their “taste” aside and grant safe passage to all the gaudy, cheesy, awkward, oddball, clashing sounds they’d reject at other times of the year, just as they agree to tolerate the discordant worldview of their wider circle of friends and relatives.
“Oh look!” I will find myself warning my kids in mid-November: “Here comes Aunty Mariah Carey! Now, c’mon, I know the high notes are really annoying, but she’s had a hard time, what with Twitter/X refusing to blue tick her status as Queen of Christmas, so be nice and sing along. Oh, and there, right behind her? It’s Paul McCartney simply having a wonderful time and his old mucker John Lennon – he’s always asking what you’ve done with your year. Be nice if Chris de Burgh tells you he’s seen a spaceship, and remember to give George Michael back his heart on the way out – he left it here last Christmas. Uncle Chris Rea? I think he’s still stuck in traffic, but let’s keep our hearts warm for him…”
I write this as a late adopter of Christmas, and an even later adopter of the Christmas song. Born in the mid-1970s, I grew up in a time when children were forced onto the knees of drunk, sweaty men dressed as Santa at suburban golf club dos. As a child, the whole thing struck me as loud, fake and awkward, but I realised that, being young, all adults expected me to smile and say how exciting I found it. As an atheist singer in a cathedral choir, I preferred the precise, vaulting arches of hymns to the garish flashes of jolly pop. Noddy Holder yelling “It’s Chriiiiiiistmas” and Wizzard wishing it could be Christmas every day were overwhelming.
But across my adult life, I’ve softened to the season. Working in shops in my twenties, I enjoyed helping people pick out gifts to the sounds of Shakin’ Stevens’ “Merry Christmas Everyone”. I helped assemble a snow scene window display, slotting together cardboard reindeer to TLC’s “Sleigh Ride”. When I realised some kids in the street outside were watching, I danced around with the glittery antlers on my head and found myself laughing out loud.
The 2000’s embrace of “guilty pleasures” allowed us all to relax. A colleague at my first office job brought a CD of David Hasselhoff’s 2004 Christmas album into work. Each track an increasingly daft cracker joke: a shared groan. The sound of the Baywatch star bopping his Latin-inflected way through “Feliz Navidad” – like a holiday rep getting the karaoke started in a hotel lobby – was pure audio tinsel. Fun.
At charity shops, I stocked up on celebrity Christmas classics by Doris Day, Peggy Lee, Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Barbra Streisand and Nat King Cole. Their rich, lounge-jazz voices can always be relied on to take the edge off any festive stresses. Mae West’s 1966 rock’n’roll offering Wild Christmas is a glorious party record. Born in 1893, the platinum blonde gift wraps every innuendo and purrs that: “A man under the mistletoe is worth two under the tree”. Columnists who tell 65-year-old Madonna to “grow up” need reminding that septuagenarian West was still throwing all her wit and sexuality at the beat over half a century ago.
Pushing the envelope further, horror movie star Christopher Lee recorded a heavy metal Christmas album after he turned 90. It’s funny, but too jarring to play often. Better the cosier company of Dolly Parton, Michael Bublé or Judy Garland. As Tim Minchin notes on his own gorgeously Australian Christmas song, “White Wine in the Sun”, the season’s comforts often lie in its safe, soft predictabilities. So although he admits he has “all of the usual objections/ To consumerism/ To the commercialisation of an ancient religion/ To the westernisation of a dead Palestinian/ Press-ganged into selling PlayStations and beer”, he still really likes seeing his whole family united, noting: “The old combination of sock, jocks and chocolates is just fine with me.”
Not-so silent night: Christopher Lee’s notorious festive record ‘A Heavy Metal Christmas’— (Charlemagne Productions Ltd)
But this is also a season of randomly accumulating traditions. The first year my children were old enough to help me decorate our tree, I grabbed any old CD off the top of my Christmas pile. It was called Home for the Holidays by Hootie and the Blowfish’s Darius Rucker: a smooth, steady and occasionally silly slide through seasonal standards from “Let it Snow, Let it Snow” to “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing“. My two-year-old daughter grabbed two star-shaped baubles for claws and pranced around the lounge to “You’re a Mean One, Mr Grinch” and that’s been the album we’ve played while dressing the tree every year since. No one else has heard of this record – or our beloved collection of Xmas folk songs, Midwinter (2006) – but every family is bound together by its own unique rituals.
It is important to find space for some sadder Christmas songs. I’ll play Tracy Thorne’s “Joy” when I’m alone in the car and cry to lyrics like: “When someone very dear/ Calls you with the words/ “Everything’s All Clear”/ That’s what you want to hear/ But you know it might be/ Different in the New Year”. I’ll play Joni Mitchell’s “River”, Phoebe Bridgers’s “Christmas Song” and Simon and Garfunkel’s “7 O’Clock News/ Silent Night” when I’m wrapping stocking fillers and lean into those soft sweet voices harmonising over the realities of a world at war.
But when my kids come downstairs, I’ll throw on all the big festive hits like Christmas jumpers, drawing them into a culture they can wrap around themselves like scarves. One that’s like all the sparkly old hits on Cher’s new album – one of silly, profound, predictable crackers sparking and connecting through time. We got Cher, babe! She’s here! At the door, taking off her boots. Hey, she’s brought Stevie Wonder and Darlene Love (82-year-old singer from vintage girl group Blossoms) and sweary schmaltz king Michael Bublé to duet over the church bells and echoey acoustic guitar of his old song “Home”. Tyga’s there to rap about sitting her on his lap. And Cher continues to pour her deep and distinctive vocals over the familiar melodies like Bailey’s over ice. Sweet, creamy and with a bitter kick of heartbreak somewhere deeper in the mix. What’s not to like in her easy assurance that the Christmas heartbeat goes on?
