My Favourite Christmas Songs

At the time of writing it is the 23rd of December, otherwise known as Christmas Eve Eve. That means that Christmas music has been playing non-stop for over three weeks now. I love Mariah Carey just as much as the next person, but there are only so many times I can listen to ‘All I Want for Christmas is You’ before I start to hope the only thing she gets for Christmas is coal. But then again, she doesn’t care about the presents underneath the Christmas tree, so she probably wouldn’t mind.

With this being said, there are a couple of Christmas songs I like considerably more than others. Both of these are from musicals that I’ve seen fairly recently and liked a lot for their combination of more traditional musical storylines and the politics of the era.

The first of these is ‘Merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher’ from Billy Elliot. Set in the 1980s in Yorkshire, the song is a mining community singing a Christmas song aimed at Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, describing what they feel she’s done to their community. Thatcher privatized and closed mines in England and many areas suffered from this deindustrialization, as wages fell and many jobs were lost. I’ve been talking about and singing this song a lot in the past few weeks, but I honestly listen to it all year round. The subject is controversial, as the people of the UK are still split in their opinions on Margaret Thatcher, but the song is catchy and fun enough to (maybe) smooth some feathers ruffled by lines like ‘we all celebrate today/because it’s one day closer to your death’. Despite this, I think the song is not as divisive as it could be because it is mostly based around the personal experiences of the Northern miners with Thatcher’s policies, not the overall effects they had on the country.

Moving across the pond and fifty years back in time, the second song is ‘We’d Like to Thank You Herbert Hoover’ from Annie. It’s a group of people living in poverty, again singing a Christmas song aimed at their country’s leader, but in this case the leader is Herbert Hoover. Hoover was US President from 1928-1932- notably, during the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression. Arguably, the Depression did not end until the start of World War II, but Hoover became infamous for refusing to take action to help those suffering, instead saying that ‘prosperity is around the corner’. This song is considerably less controversial, but is just as enjoyable to listen to. On a slightly different note, personally I think that Annie is set in the wrong year- it should be 1932, not 1933. Annie is seen to inspire FDR’s ‘New Deal’ in one scene at Christmas 1933, but FDR became President in January 1933 and started enforcing his policies soon after. If the musical was shifted to Christmas 1932, he would still be President-Elect, and the timeline would work better. However, this is only nitpicking and the musical rightly deserves its place as a classic.