"Christmas" music....that isn't Christmas related

Cafe Society
1

Why do we hear songs such as “My Favorite Things” only at Christmas? Written for the “Sound of Music” in 1959, it wasn’t first put on a Christmas album until 1964.

“Parade of the Wooden/Tin Soldiers” was written in 1897 - nothing to do with winter or Christmas?

“Count Your Blessings”?
“Ave Maria”?
Perry Como put “Bless This House” on a Christmas album
“Frosty the Snowman”
“Sleigh Ride”

And the hundreds of other songs that simply mention “snow” or “winter”, and end up only being played at Christmas.

Any other “obvious” ones?

2

One that surprised me when I realized it: It Came Upon a Midnight Clear. You’ve got angels singing and wishing peace on Earth and so on… but there’s not actually any mention at all of why the angels are singing. No Jesus, no Mary, no Bethlehem, no stable, just angels.

3

Ray Charles put “Oh Happy Day” on a Christmas album.

It mentions “snowflakes” and “winter”.

From White Christmas.

4

I think Jingle Bells is the prime example of this (Is this the one the OP calls “Sleigh Ride”?)

5

Just “Peace on the earth, good will to men” a direct quote from the Christmas story, and “heaven’s all gracious King” which is Jesus.

Though as Wikipedia says, it is “remarkable for its focus not in Bethlehem, but in (the author’s) own time”.

6

Isaac Watts wrote Joy to the World for Easter.

Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s Pie Jesu gets a lot of play this time o’ year.

And Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah has been on a number of Christmas albums the last few years. Not Christmasy at all.

7

That’s likely the Leroy Anderson composition.

8

No , that’s this one

Just hear those sleigh bells jingling, ring ting tingling too
Come on it’s lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you
Outside the snow is falling and friends are calling, “Yoo hoo!”
Come on it’s lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you

9

“Deck the Halls” is explicitly a Yuletide carol, not a Christmas one, and one of the few to reference the “new year” but not Christmas.

On a different note, Jona Lewie’s Stop the Cavalry wasn’t supposed to be a Christmas song at all; it’s a generic anti-war song. But Lewie included the line “Wish I was at home for Christmas” and bingo bango, now it gets played every Christmas in the UK. Lewie has said he didn’t mean it that way, but I’m sure he appreciates the royalties (and it’s a rather nice song in itself).

10

Pretty much any song relating to children, toys, winter, or Jesus are fair game. Christmas is all-consuming. Thanks to Tim Burton, it even gobbled up Halloween.

11

This one is complex. There was a piece called March of the Tin/Wooden Soldirers from 1897, but the thing people associate with "March of the Wooden Soldiers is actually the 1903 Victor Herbert operetta Babes in Toyland, which was a Christmas-themed extravaganza that featured a tune “March of the Toys” and also wooden soldiers.

In 1934 Hal Roach produced a Laurel and Hardy vehicle very loosely based on Babes in Toyland, and called by that name, although it became better known as March of the Wooden Soldiers. as far as I know, it isn’;t related to the Leon Jessel music, but I could be wrong. The Wikipedia page doesn’t mention that it was used in the movie. The film featured a rescue, at the end, of Toyland from an assault by the Boogeymen when Laurel and Hardy’s toy soldiers (instead of producing 600 1-foot-tall soldiers, they made 100 6-foot-tall-soldiers) are activated and rout the invaders. There’s a great stop-motion scene of the soldiers marching out, although for the rest of the movie they’re played by people in soldier costume with half-circles attached to their feet.

(Disney was a fried of Roach’s, and let him use the character of Mickey Mouse, played by a monkey in costume)

Since the film, like the operetta, was Christmas-themed, it always got shown around Christmas time, especially many years later on television when it was 25 or more years older. It got a new lease on life when it was computer colorized in the 1990s.

To tell the truth, though, there’s no explicit reference to Christmas in it that I can recall, or that the synposes online say anything about.

Disney made his own version of the story in 1961, starring Annette Funicello, Tommy Sands, Ray Bolger (!! The Scarecrow of Oz himself!) as Barnaby, the Bad Guy, and Ed Wynn as The Toymaker (three years before his role in Mary Poppins). He removed just about all the references to Christmas, except for the Toymaker being pressed to finish his toys by Christmas. Nevertheless, the fil m was released at Christmas, and Disney uses Toy Soldiers from the movie in Christmas parades.

12

“Do You Hear What I Hear?” is apparently about a nuclear holocaust, but it gets played almost exclusively at Christmas. I guess the writers were asked to do a Christmas song, and they said, “Er, no. How about the Cuban Missile Crisis?”

13

That’s not true, but it’s amusing to read through the lyrics as if it were.

14

Winter Wonderland doesn’t mention Christmas, Santa, or anything Christmas-related in its lyrics (although this site lists it as a “Christmas Carol”)

15

For that matter, Good King Wenceslas doesn’t mention Christmas at all – it takes place “on the feast of Stephen”, which is December 26, the day after Christmas.

Wikipedia lists it as a Christmas Carol, and it has been for over 150 years. But, as one cite in the Wikipedia article claims, it started out as an Easter Carol. That would have to be before it got that Feast of Stephen lyric, if true.

16

Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” is obviously about Jesus. But it’s from the part of The Messiah that deals with the Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ, not his birth.

Instrumental versions of Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” sometimes get played as Christmas music. It’s not about Christmas specifically but it’s close enough since it’s about Jesus. It is often paired on Christmas albums with Bach’s “Sheep may Safely Graze” which makes much less sense. That one is entirely secular. The larger cantata that it comes from is about hunting.

Vince Guaraldi’s “Linus and Lucy” was featured on the Charlie Brown Christmas special, but it wasn’t written for it. It was written a year earlier as part of the soundtrack for a planned television documentary about Charles Schultz and Peanuts that never aired.

17

“Baby, It’s Cold Outside” seems to get played every year around Christmas. But the song doesn’t mention the holiday.

18

I don’t think of the Coltrane version as a Christmas song at all.

Likewise “Let it Snow”.

19

Here’s a useful guideline: if a Christmas song was written by a Jewish songwriter, it probably isn’t actually about Christmas.

20

Like Johnny Marks?

Or Irving Berlin, who wrote White Christmas?

Or these: