Stop in, look around, have a drink and crank some tunes. I'll be posting some songs ripped from records, some out of print and hard to find stuff, some songs by artists you should be listening to, and a few mixes here and there.

Monday, December 09, 2013

Are these really Christmas songs???

OK. I have a question. Who decided that "My Favorite Things" and "What A Wonderful World" are Christmas songs? And what about "Linus and Lucy"? Not a Christmas song in my books.

7 comments:

mel said...

You're quite right. They are absolutely not Christmas songs, brainwerk. And neither is Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! or a whole lot of other "cold weather" songs.

nidostar said...

Couldn't agree more. Coming from the UK I did puzzle why the Sound of Music classic was included in so many Christmas albums from the US. Just because it refers to snowflakes and silvery white winters.
But what about the Pogues Fairy Tale of New York and Jonah Louie's Stop The Cavalry? Both mention the word Christmas but I'd hardly call them Christmas songs.

brainwerk said...

I give the cold weather songs a giant pass because I live in Minnesota. I'm not sure I'd be so excited about them if I lived in a warm climate during December…

Jay Dee said...

A lot of the time they reached the Top 40 charts at Christmas, and so have over the years become recognised as 'Christmassy'

12vjoe said...

Favorite things is definitely not - same w/Wonderful World.

I'm a bit on the fence about Linus & Lucy, as I have used that on xmas comps in the past :)

But I have to disagree w/nidostar - Fairytale of NY is most definitely a xmas song - not a particularly happy xmas song, but still one of the best xmas songs evah!

Anonymous said...

I think "brown paper packages tied up with string" has a little echo of gift-giving in it (although it's a stretch); Wonderful World puzzles me too.

But "Linus and Lucy?" That's the grooviest track from "A Charlie Brown Christmas!"

Shiloh said...

with Holiday favorites it's not just about the lyrical content of them, but things like the movie or tv show they were in at christmas time, envoke memories for people. "favorite things" is from Sound of Music which i think premiered around Christmas and has the Von Trapps singing in a Christmas play,..linus and lucy popularised in "a charlie brown christmas"...and so on.