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It is just so hard to believe that Christmas is right here! Wow… With the weather being as hot as it is and things just feeling different, I would believe you if you said it was still November!

Anyways, I have been thinking for a week now what I wanted to write this blog about and I just could not think of anything UNTIL all I was hearing in stores, on the radio, and more was Christmas music. It got me to thinking… What is the HISTORY behind these carols and songs that we listen to every December?

I asked around and put a poll up on Instagram and Facebook to see what the most popular Christmas songs were. Keep reading to hear the history of the following Christmas songs and what makes them so unique!

All I Want for Christmas Is You- Mariah Carey
Mariah Carey released this song in 1994 and it ended up topping the charts in twenty-six countries including Australia, Canada, France and Germany. With an estimated sales of over 16 million copies worldwide, “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is the best-selling holiday song by a female artist, and one of the best-selling physical singles in music history. That is pretty cool, isn’t it? It took Mariah a total of 15 minutes to write and compose it.

So, what is it about??

Mariah Carey had a dysfunctional childhood and nothing was ever perfect. The inspiration behind the song comes from her thinking of all of the things she thinks about at Christmas time. She grew up not having a lot of money and not being able to experience the holidays like the other kids. When she wrote “All I Want for Christmas Is You”, she just put every ounce of longing for that perfect moment in it, because she wanted Christmas to be perfect.

O Holy Night- Placide Cappeau & John Sullivan Dwight
Also known as (“Cantique de Noël”), O Holy Night is a well-known Christmas carol. The song was originally based on a French-language poem by poet Placide Cappeau. Placide wrote the poem in 1843, with the first line “Minuit, chrétiens! c’est l’heure solennelle” (Midnight, Christians, is the solemn hour) that composer Adolphe Adam set to music in 1847. The English version is by John Sullivan Dwight. The carol reflects on the birth of Jesus as humanity’s redemption.

In a small town in southern France at the end of 1843, the church organ had recently been renovated. To celebrate the event, the parish priest persuaded poet Placide to write a Christmas poem. The English version was written in 1855 and it became very popular in the United States, especially in the North.

Blue Christmas- Elvis Presley
I have always been a fan of Elvis Presley. The song “Blue Christmas” is written by Billy Hayes and Jay W. Johnson. It was first recorded by Doye O’Dell in 1948, even though the tune is most frequently associated with Elvis Presley. It is a tale of unrequited love during the holidays and perfectly captures how lonely the season can be without the ones you love. It is a longstanding staple of Christmas music and has been for over 70 years.

Songwriter Jay W. Johnson first wrote the song on his commuter train from his home in Connecticut to New York City. He had been working writing jingles for the radio and was inspired by some of the other hit Christmas songs at the time like “White Christmas” which blew up thanks to Bing Crosby. He took his lyrics to his composer friend Billy Hayes and together they put the finishing touches on the song. But initially, no one was interested in recording the song when it was offered to various artists around Nashville. Isn’t that something?

White Christmas- Bing Crosby
With 50 million copies sold, not only is “White Christmas” the best-selling Christmas song of all time, it’s also the best-selling single ever, according to Guinness World Records. It was written by Irving Berlin, a Russian-born immigrant who, interestingly enough, did not celebrate Christmas, as he was Jewish.

The kind of deep secret of the song may be that it was Berlin responding in some way to his melancholy about the death of his son. Berlin’s three-week-old son had died on Christmas day in 1928, so every year on December 25, he and his wife visited their baby’s grave.

Bing Crosby’s rendition quickly became an American favorite, even though the original radio recording was lost and the 1942 version, which is said to have only taken 18 minutes, was worn out. It was constantly requested by troops during Bing’s USO appearances overseas, which gave the singer some mixed feelings. “I hesitated about doing it because invariably it caused such a nostalgic yearning among the men, that it made them sad,” Crosby said in an interview.

Jingle Bell Rock- Bobby Helms
Released in 1957, “Jingle Bell Rock” has been a holiday classic, covered by everyone from Reba Mcentire and Blake Shelton to Hall & Oates. But it’s Bobby Helms that helped turn the song into what it is today with his original recording.

The song was written by Joseph Carleton Beal and James Ross Boothe, two men who worked in Public Relations and the advertising industry. Though Helms later claimed that he wrote the song along with guitarist Hank Garland who also played in Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” The two men claimed that the initial song they received was titled “Jingle Bell Hop” and that numerous edits were made to make the song what we know today. They maintained this claim until they both passed away though they never did receive writing credits. 

The song charted on the billboards multiple times over the years especially after appearing on the soundtrack for popular holiday films like Home Alone 2: Lost In New York, and Jingle All The Way.

Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)- Mariah Carey
Originally sung by Darlene Love, Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) is a rock song. The song was written by Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry. Love was given a demo of it over the phone. She recorded the song in the studio and it has since become over time a success and has been one of her signature tunes ever since. The song as recorded by Love was released as a single in 1963 and in 1964, but the records did not chart in either year. In December 2010, Rolling Stone magazine ranked “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” first on its list of The Greatest Rock and Roll Christmas Songs, noting that “nobody can match Love’s emotion and sheer vocal power.”

Popularly known now from Mariah Carey who did a rendition of the song, the digital single reached No. 59 on Billboard’s Hot Digital Songs chart in 2011, and has sold more than 200,000 copies. Mariah even sang her classic Christmas album cover of Darlene Love’s “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” in 2008 at The GRAMMY Nominations Concert Live!!

In 2021, Carey covered the song again for her Christmas special, Mariah’s Christmas: The Magic Continues.

Santa Baby- Eartha Kitt
Also deemed controversial to some people, Santa Baby was originally released in 1953. The song is performed by American singer Eartha Kitt with Henri René and His Orchestra. The song was written by Joan Javits and Philip Springer.

Lyrically, the song is a tongue-in-cheek look at a Christmas list addressed to Santa Claus by a woman who wants extravagant gifts such as yachts, sables, and decorations from Tiffany’s.

The lyrical content of “Santa Baby” proved controversial, resulting in temporary bans of the song in the Southern United States. Music critics gave mixed reviews to the single, with some calling it too suggestive for a holiday-themed song. Springer was initially dissatisfied with “Santa Baby” and called it one of his weakest works. It has since been included on lists of both the best and worst Christmas songs ever written.

In the United States, “Santa Baby” became the best-selling Christmas song of 1953 and found more success, retrospectively, when it entered various component charts by Billboard in the 2000s and 2010s. Elsewhere, it peaked on the record charts in Canada, France, Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. As of 2014, Kitt’s version had sold more than 620,000 copies, having appeared on Kitt’s self-titled and first extended play in 1954.

Baby It’s Cold Outside- Frank Loesser
This one is a classic, for sure! Composed in 1944, Loesser originally wrote “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” as a playful call-and-response duet for him and his wife to perform at their housewarming party while their guests were preparing to bid them goodnight. In 1948, the song was recorded for the musical Neptune’s Daughter; in the score, the male and female parts are labeled “the Wolf” and “the Mouse,” respectively. The premise is that the Wolf and the Mouse have gone on a date, and after having a nightcap back at his house, she’s making her excuses to leave, while he’s urging her to stay.

Turning into a controversial topic, there have been many opinions made about this song. One opinion is whether is was even fair to call it a Christmas song, considering the lyrics don’t have anything to do with the holidays at all. While it’s impossible to say for certain when listeners first noticed that the back and forth sounded kind of creepy, the earliest known article on the subject was published in 2004 by Canada’s National Post.

An article written in 2016 by a former teacher and jazz enthusiast, parsed “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” in the context of the time it was written. While the line “What’s in this drink?” was interpreted by some as the Wolf plying the Mouse with alcohol in order to take advantage of her, the blogger wrote that it “was a stock joke at the time” and “the punchline was invariably that there’s actually pretty much nothing in the drink, not even a significant amount of alcohol.” Anyways, it is a classic song played every holiday and What do you think about the song?

O Come All Ye Faithful- John Francis Wade
“O Come, All Ye Faithful” (originally written in Latin as “Adeste Fideles“) is a classic Christmas hymn that has been attributed to various authors, including John Francis Wade (1711–1786), John Reading (1645–1692), King John IV of Portugal (1604–1656), and anonymous monks. The earliest printed version is in a book published by Wade. A manuscript by Wade, dating to 1751, is held by Stonyhurst College in Lancashire.

This carol is generally attributed to John Wade, a British exile living in France after fleeing the Jacobean rebellion. He earned a living by teaching music and copying plain chant and hymn manuscripts for private use. The original four verses of the hymn were extended to a total of eight, and these have been translated into many languages. The English translation of “O Come, All Ye Faithful” by the English Catholic priest Frederick Oakeley, written in 1841, is widespread in most English-speaking countries.

I attached the cover by Nat King Cole, so give it a listen!

Grandma Got Ran Over By A Reindeer- Randy Brooks
I know that we all know this one! In 1977, Dallas resident Randy Brooks came up with the lyrics to “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer,” telling the story of a grandma who drank too much eggnog and had an unfortunate run-in with Santa’s sleigh.

Brooks said the group Elmo & Patsy heard him perform it at a show and asked if they could record the song and sell copies of it at their own shows. Brooks gave them permission, and a few months later a disc jockey at a San Francisco radio station played the song on-air.

“All hell broke loose. The phones at KSFO started ringing off the hook, most people saying, ‘Don’t ever play that song again!’ But other people said, ‘Oh, do play it again!’” Brooks said. “Different news outlets and radio stations started saying where can we get a copy of the record? And they were just printing them up themselves. They couldn’t press them fast enough,” Brooks said.

By 1983, it was the most popular holiday tune that year and soon the song evolved into cartoons, toys and clothes.

I hope you enjoyed reading about these Christmas tunes! It was so fun to research their history and origins. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! (: