The 65 best Christmas songs of all time

It’s hard to believe, but there was a time when Mimi’s inescapable ear worm was just a forgotten novelty song from yet another standard-issue pop-singer holiday album. Now, in a post Love Actually world, hearing ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ for the first time in a year is one of the most reliable signs that the holidays are here. The song came and went when released in 1995, but snowballed in cultural cachet in the aughts, slowly climbing in popularity every year before finally topping US charts in 2019 and the UK charts in 2020. Complaining about its ubiquity has become a pastime for killjoys at pubs, but it’s their loss: From the twinkly intro to Mariah’s tour-de-force delivery, everything here is as timeless as it is flawless. 

When was the last time you properly listened to Kirsty MacColl and The Pogues’ epic Big Apple-set fable? Shut your eyes and give it a go, and if you aren’t a nervous wreck by the fade-out, your heart (like that jumper from your nan) is two sizes too small. ‘Fairytale…’ is a perfect four-minute narrative of hope, despair and heartbreak – and, despite the profanity, it ends with love. 

A ballad of doomed romance, ‘Last Christmas’ features sleighbells and synths, plus some truly memorable knitwear in the video. But what really sets ‘Last Christmas’ apart is George Michael’s heart-on-sleeve delivery: his genuine heartbreak horror (‘My God! I thought you were someone to rely on’) and wistful, sexy whispers. The words ‘Merry Christmas’ never sounded so sultry. 

The power of Christmas nostalgia itself is greater than real memories. Hence, all of us can hark back with Bing on this Irving Berlin-penned ’40s number to a white Christmas just like the ones we used to know, even if our true past is full of crushing disappointments (December 25, 1993 – no Hornby train set). 

Is this the most moving Christmas tune of all time? Probably – the combination of Darlene Love’s impeccable pleading vocal, Phil Spector’s gloriously tinselly production and Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry’s magical songwriting could make anyone, even the biggest Scrooge, melt like a snowman under a hairdryer. It’s just an absolutely perfect Christmas song.

Feliz Navidad is a criminally underrated Christmas song, despite apparently being one of the most played across the world. It’s been around for years and years, originally released way back in 1970, but its jaunty, cheerful energy has stood the test of time. The trumpets, the classic well-wishes belted in Spanish, the strum of the Puerto Rican cuatro? What a catchy, merry treat. Whack it on your christmas playlists – it’ll really spread the joy.

Queen Ella Fitzgerald and King Louis Armstrong are a completely necessary part of every Christmas, IMO. They actually have a whole Christmas album together, but ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ is the absolute classic from their repertoire. A twinkling piano and a double bass are all that’s needed for their soft, mellow harmonies, but wack the whole album on and you’ve got the perfect soundtrack to your Christmas nibbles and cocktails evening. 

There are versions of this song by everyone from Bieber to Bublé, but Michael and the gang’s effort is the grooviest and the most fun. And since the song is mainly used as a bargaining tool by parents, it does make sense to have kids on the mic.

East 17’s all-time Christmas classic wasn’t supposed to be a Christmas song at all. As the Walthamstow, England group’s songwriting member Tony Mortimer told us recently, it’s actually an incredibly sad song inspired by his brother’s suicide. That raw emotion seems to seep into the group’s gorgeously sombre four-part harmonies and even the inevitable Christmas song sleigh bells, producing a peerless exercise in festive melancholy. 

Didn’t Christmas feel so much simpler as a child? That notion underpins John Cale’s ‘Child’s Christmas in Wales’, a tune inspired by a prose piece by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas that is similarly stream-of-conscious and likewise overspills with nostalgia. But even without the lyrics you’d fully guess this was a festive one. With its jolly pace, swooning guitar, serene verses and twinkling organ solo, ‘Child’s Christmas in Wales’ is an alternative Crimbo tune, but a Crimbo tune nonetheless.

Being Jewish, songwriter Johnny Marks didn’t celebrate Christmas, but in the ’40s and ’50s he wrote some of the greatest Christmas songs of all time. Among them are ‘Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer,’ ‘I Heard The Bells of Christmas Day,’ and this – an easy-on-the-ear rock ’n’ roll tune sung by a 13-year-old Brenda Lee, which really needs no introduction.

Good old Macca. Whereas Lennon could be relied upon to make impressive political statements (when he wasn't laying about in bed all day), McCartney is the master of the charmingly naïve pop opus. This little ditty — which is essnetially Paul goofing around on a synth — isn't going to shake up your festive paradigm, but it won't half stick in your head.

This loungey number about being stuck in Christmas traffic from husky-voiced housewives’ favourite Chris Rea has had surprisingly lasting appeal. Not only has it charted twice in the UK (reaching 53 in 1988 and 33 in 2007) but it even cracked Norway’s Top Three a few years ago. Clearly people of all generations and nationalities are able to enjoy this harmless slice of Christmas cheese.

At the beginning of this somewhat unlikely 1980 Christmas smash, you can hear the moment at which hip hop arrived. Interrupting a starchy recital of ‘A Visit from St Nicholas,’ Kurtis Blow launches into his own inner city yarn about Santa showing up to a Harlem Christmas party, producing a Yuletide classic – and rap’s first major-label hit.

Ronnie Spector’s distinctive and sensual vocals could easily melt any Christmas snow. On this highlight from the classic Phil Spector Christmas album, she purrs about getting cosy under a blanket on a sleigh ride while her fellow Ronettes ‘ring-a-ling-a-ling-a-ding-dong-ding’ in the background. Spector’s arrangement may be full of trilling bells and clip-clopping hooves, but the melody’s irrepressible warmth hints at the fact that this song was composed (by light orchestral maestro Leroy Anderson) during a July heatwave.

There’s nothing quite like when the slow, warbling Christmas classics have been playing all day and someone wacks on this chaotic 2001 banger by Destiny’s Child. It’s essentially an unnervingly fast-paced version of ‘12 Days of Christmas’, but instead of five golden rings, the ladies get back rubs, cropped denim jackets and Chloe shades. Oh, and ‘a gift certificate to buy my favourite CDs.’ It’s painfully noughties and it’s so bad, it’s good. Say it with me, ‘doesn’t it feel like Christmas?’

The 1950 classic gets an early-’90s ethereal keyboard treatment courtesy of Scottish dreamers the Cocteau Twins. Singer Elizabeth Fraser could have plumbed the aching sadness of snowman existence but instead her vocals are all shimmering colours and dancing forest fairies. When the overlapping harmonies come in around 1:36 you know that this Christmas is going to be pretty magical.

Following its release in 1957, this rockabilly ditty topped the Christmas charts five years in a row, making it a veritable holiday classic even by the early ’60s. Today it retains a towering presence in the Christmas canon, as synonymous with the holiday as tinsel and paper crowns.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s definitive festive peace-on-earth song is an inescapable feature of every Christmas, transcending  its original anti-Vietnam War purpose to become a one-size-fits-all Christmas banger. Sure, bits of it make you cringe. But that's all part of the season, eh?

You could just listen to this perfect slice of pure ’70s pop, from the tongue-in-cheek ‘ker-ching’ of a ringing till to the fade-out of a children’s choir and twinkling bells. You could do that. Or take the plunge into the strange acid trip of Wizzard live and witness Roy Wood’s haunted eyes set in a face dripping with snowy glitter. Scary Christmas.

Sir Elton annonces ‘welcome to my Christmas song’ at the top of this piano-driven banger, signaling to us all that this is a Christmas song with zero alterior motives except to become a yuletide classic. Mission accomplished. 

Tina howls and growls her way through Christmas, R&B style, and tops it all off with a spirited freestyle nod to ‘Jingle Bells’ for good measure. 

If you love new wave bands like Blondie and Talking Heads, this is surely the Christmas song for you. It begins cynically with singer Patty Donahue declaring ‘I think I’ll miss this one this year,’ before an unexpected romance blossoms in the closing stages and warms her jaded cockles. As festive tunes go, this one’s as dry and delicious as champagne paid for by your boss. 

Bob Geldof and Midge Ure’s 1984 reaction to the Ethiopian famine, with contributions from Phil Collins, Sting, Macca and Bono, was a publicity machine of epic proportions. It worked: ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ stayed at the top spot for five weeks, and was the biggest UK chart success of the decade. Put that all aside, and it’s also just a great (and surprisingly unconventional) pop song, meteorological misunderstandings about snow be damned.

The King adds some characteristic swagger to this cover of the 1948 country original. Spawning plenty of tributes of its own, Presley sealed the deal for ‘Blue Christmas’ – it’s now a festive staple.

Ari didn’t score a Mariah-level megahit with this peppy, upbeat ode to joy, but she came closer than almost any other pop star in the 30-ish years since ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You.’ Unlike Kelly Clarkson – who scored a memorable hit by channeling Darlene Love – Ari’s song fits right in her catalog of bops… meaning you can comfortably transition between this plea to St. Nick and her recent hit about a late-night tantra session with relative ease. 

The godfather of funk gives Father Christmas his marching orders, insisting he head straight to the ghetto and ‘tell ‘em James Brown sent ya.’ It may raise a smile, there’s something serious at the heart of this all-horns-blazing tune: JB wants the kids on the wrong side of the tracks to enjoy the sort of Christmas he never did.

Recorded at the height of his powers, Chuck Berry rolls out his characteristic frenzied 12-bar blues in reverence of everyone’s favourite reindeer. Despite not even managing to break the top 50 when it was first released, it has become an enduring holiday favourite and spawned plenty of covers.

A bit like the Frasier theme tune, it’s impossible to listen to this version of ‘O Tannenbaum’ (from the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas) without doing the classic jazz lean-and-nod. Basically, press play and you’re suddenly cooler. This could be a good one to change up the vibe from Christmas lazing to some Christmas loving.

With an injection of sass and unabashed materialism, Beyoncé, Kelly and Michelle turned a cosy old holiday favourite into a bumping R&B Christmas carol for our times. A fine achievement.

This surreal encounter on Bing Crosby’s 42nd Christmas Special between The Thin White Duke and the good ol’ boy of American family TV has become the stuff of legend. After Dave mistakes Bing for a butler and Bing jibes at Bowie’s music taste, they launch into a medley of ‘The Little Drummer Boy’ and ‘Peace On Earth.’ The results are... astounding.

Sure, Kelly Clarkson’s foray into festive music is kind of a shameless attempt to write a new ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ smashed together with Darlene Love’s ‘Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),’ but it gets away with it. Why? Partly because the songwriting offers just the right blend of schmaltz and Spector-style sass, but also because Clarkson’s superb vocal performance radiates a sincerity that’s completely infectious. Oh, and her high note towards the end is a moment.

In the particularly rollicking, punk-adjacent riot, Ray Davies not only spoils Santa’s true identity, he also threatens to kick his ass if he doesn’t give him some money. At its heart, it’s a sad song about poor kids’ disappointment on Christmas. It’s also a hilarious, snotty, overlooked piece of Christmas counter-programming from one of rock’s all time greats.

No one does Christmas quite like our Sufjan. Not content with releasing a 42-track Songs For Christmas album in 1996, this year he put out Silver & Gold – a whopping 101-song collection celebrating Jesus’s birthday. Picking a favourite out of his festive back catalogue is tough, but we rate ‘O Come O Come Emmanuel’ – a reworking of the traditional favourite on ‘Songs For Christmas’ – as our favourite track. Sparse and haunting, but also uplifting, it’s a beautiful little call to rejoice.

Another all-time festive standard that somewhat counterintuitively emerged from the largely disposable, transient rockabilly craze of the ’50s. Thirteen at the time, singer Brenda Lee has stated that she has no idea why songwriter Johnny Marks was so keen she be the one to tackle this song. But well over 60 years later and it remains a sweet, sprightly classic, the epitome of unjaded excitement about the holidays as Lee yelps away about her excitement at having a seasonal boogie.

Think you had a bad Christmas last year when you burned the turkey? Spare a thought for Joni Mitchell, who’s heartbroken and wants to escape the Xmas merriment all around her. From the ‘Jingle Bells’-drenched-in-melancholy piano opening, it’s clear this isn’t going to be a jolly ride, but it’s still beautiful and delicate. By the end, all you’ll want to do is skate away with Joni (her oft-repeated cry throughout the song) and help mend her broken heart. Perhaps that’s why it’s one of her most covered songs, having been recorded by over 500 people.

It’s not just a drizzle of dudes that gets The Weather Girls going. From the same album as ‘It’s Raining Men’ (and pulling all the same moves with a festive twist), ‘Dear Santa’ is a seasonal stormer that represents the grooviest Christmas list ever written. Bonus points for the ‘fa-la-la-la-la’ backing vocals.

It sounds like a take on the classic ‘it’s Christmas, I miss you’ theme, but Chrissie Hynde’s frosty ballad gets much sadder when you know it was written for the band’s guitarist James Honeyman-Scott, who had died the previous year. Honeyman-Scott’s replacement Robbie McIntosh pays tribute with some gorgeous arpeggios: the closest a guitar gets to the sound of snowfall.

If you needed any more proof that the ’70s were a weird, weird time, consider this: one of the decade’s most popular and enduring Christmas hits is a prog-folk version of a JS Bach setting of a carol dating back to the fourteenth century. Sometimes the old tunes are the best.

The alt-country icon managed a minor miracle by turning the abysmal spoiled-brat anthem ‘I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas’ into something listenable, but she also managed to carve out a place on the yule playlist with this stripped-down slice of sweetness from her holiday special. It’s a Christmas love song dripping in cute, and an expertly crafted slow-dance amid all the sleigh bells. 

This GOOD Music Christmas posse track serves up just about everything you’d expect from Kanye and Ko (except massive delays). A pre-gospel-phase 'Ye raps about unwrapping (removing the knickers from) his Christmas present, Jim Jones proposes we party till dawn and Big Sean says… well, not much at all. But with a slick soul-sampling beat from Hit Boy and bags of braggadocious charm, this is a head-bobbing holiday treat.

Crammed full of sleigh bells and lyrically sparse it may be, but somehow indie rockers Low managed to do the unthinkable in 1999: create a genuinely cool Christmas song. ‘Just Like Christmas’ is a wistful, lo-fi, modern Christmas anthem.

Noddy Holder and his troupe of platform-wearers continue to blight our television screens each December with their frightening fashion sense. There’s a reason for that, of course. It’s the joyful simplicity of 1973’s ‘Merry Xmas Everybody,’ which is guaranteed to inject that euphoric, slightly drunken, Christmas-love vibe into the festive season.

Whatever you think about LCD Soundsystem’s laughably brief retirement, there’s something pretty rad about James Murphy and flunkies marking their 2015 return via the medium of a low-key, slow-burning Christmas song. ‘Christmas will Break Your Heart’ starts out almost exactly as depressing as it sounds, but it builds really beautifully via its poignant ‘but still I'm coming home to you’ and its expansive wall of sound finish. A genuinely lovely record.

Robert Lopez of LA punk outfit The Zeroes wears his El Vez persona like a glove, and his Merry MeX-Mas album is chock full of classics in the waiting, from the honky-tonk ‘Orange for Christmas’ to his semi-cover ‘Brown Christmas.’ But on ‘Santa Claus is Sometimes Brown,’ he filters the King’s pur through a glass of tequila for a sultry blues explosion of come-hither holiday charm.

If you can’t be bothered to listen and find out, it turns out that singing carols, decorating the tree and, of course, being with his baby is what Christmas means to Stevie. Give it a listen anyway, though, because with that irresistible Motown swing and a harmonica solo thrown in this is (ahem) a cracker.

Trivia fans take note: this is the only song ever to hit Christmas Number One twice, for two totally different artists. ‘Mary’s Boy Child’ was recorded first by American calypso star Harry Belafonte in 1956. His slow-and-steady, ultra-classy arrangement was a massive hit and it still delivers the Christmas magic 65 years later. You’ll have to wait and see whether Boney M’s 1978 disco version can do the same.

Given his penchant for kissing mommy under the mistletoe, we’d imagine Santa'd be more than down for a little group love, honestly (yeah, yeah, we know it's not that kind of party). Jazz legend Prima's jaunty sing-along is so catchy that it even gives us a bonus track: Kanye and Kid Kudi sample ‘What Will Santa Claus Say’ as the backbone of ‘4th Dimension,’ their haunting collaborative hit as Kids See Ghosts.

Like East 17’s ‘Stay Another Day’, or the film ‘Die Hard’, Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s ‘The Power of Love’ isn’t about Christmas per se, but is nonetheless inextricably linked to the season of good cheer. Not by accident, either: the video actually features the Nativity of Jesus, a gesture of towering earnestness clearly intended as a somewhat ironic response to the Liverpudlian provocateurs’ scandalous early videos. But the song has a powerful, spiritual sincerity that would probably preserve it as a classic even without the visuals.

Among the many ghosts of Taylor Swift’s pre-pop past is a Christmas album that will hopefully not get re-recorded by the artist a la Red and Fearless. None of the tracks from The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection hold a candle to ’tis the damn season,’ from the post-folklore and post-capitilisation album evermore. In full storyteller mode, it finds the singer staying at her parents house for the holidays, getting nostalgic for the small-town sights and a familiar touch. Can you belt it out like ‘jingle bell rock?’ Nah. But it might inspire you to call your high-school crush for a stroll when you’re bored.

The great Lou Rawls’s plea for equality and peace over the holidays has a certain urgency thanks to its soulful horns and the fact that his holiday wish remains just that… a wish. Give Lou a spin, then seek out Austin soul group Black Pumas take: an organ-heavy reworking of Rawls's overlooked classic of downbeat optimism.

This highlight from RuPaul’s Christmas album isn’t a spangly dance banger, but a bone-shaking festive bop with an old-school hip hop flavour. It’s also completely infectious, especially when Ru purrs: ‘Hey sis, it's Christmas / You can cross me off of your wish list.’ Who could resist her?

‘I Wish It Was Christmas Today’ was actually a ‘Saturday Night Live’ ditty written by Jimmy Fallon and Horatio Sanz back in 2000, and a staple on the long-running US comedy show throughout the ‘00s. But it will now forever be defined by this tremendous version by Strokes frontman Julian Calablancas, which perfectly melds the song’s bratty demand for Christmas, now, with his day job’s raw, insouciant new wave. If it has had a slightly less convoluted origin you have to think it would be a little better known. But really, it stands as the last great indie Christmas song.

Ross's rendition of Macca's festive favourite is definitely a Supreme cover version — drenched in strings and sleigh bells, it sounds a little more wholesome and old-timey than the trippy original, especially when you factor in her still-magical Soprano. It's one to roast chestnuts to, for sure.

Joey Ramone’s plea to his lover to put their scrapping aside for the holidays is undoubtedly the punk Christmas anthem. Beneath its acquiescent lyrics, mind, is a typically fiery Ramones riff that’s more likely to fuel high tensions rather than ease them around a warring Christmas dinner table.

Novelty songwriter Lou Monte – with a rumoured assist from the Gambino crime family – was looking for a Rudolph-level hit with this tale about a donkey enlisted by Santa to climb the hills of Italy. That… didn’t happen. But in crafting a song specifically for Italian Americans – and in legendary lines like ‘ A pair of shoes for Louie and a dress for Josephine / The label on the inside says they're made in Brook-a-leen’ – he entered the obscure novelty song hall of fame. A karaoke banger for those who truly bang.

Yes, this is the theme to the Chevy Chase classic of the same name, but even the most ardent fans seldom realize that soul icon Mavis Staples is the one crooning out the somewhat corny ‘Hip, hip hooray, for Christmas vacation.’ That this isn’t a staple (sorry) is absolutely shocking, given the pedigree behind the mic, the status of the film and the quality of the song itself. 

Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis’s contribution to the Christmas canon is a riff on the holiday classic performed as their well-lubricated alter egos Bob & Doug McKenzie. The first coup? Replacing a partridge in a pear tree with an off-time ‘a beer.’ It’s a boozy, rambling blast from the Strange Brew stars.