It was December 2011, and around the kitchen table my family were furiously debating the lyrics to The Waitresses’ ‘Christmas Wrapping’ (undoubtedly one of the finest festive numbers ever written). Was the protagonist truly happy about spending this Christmas alone, or was she secretly yearning for the man she’d met in the now-famous Ski Shop encounter? Was the whole ‘I’ve-forgotten-cranberries’ subplot a genuine mistake or a cry for help? Did his car really refuse to start on the way to the previous year’s Halloween party? Questions abounded, although I do remember always feeling a little sad at the thought of her cooking “the world’s smallest turkey”. Suffice to say I have always taken Christmas music very seriously. And here I am, unashamed to confess my love for it.

I say this tentatively, as I am sometimes amazed by the level of animosity people have towards the ‘holiday genre’. It’s often dismissed as gimmicky, or commercial, or overly sentimental, and not ‘real’ music. There’s a view that releasing a Christmas album makes an artist a ‘sell-out’ (such critics tend to point to the likes of Justin Bieber and Michael Bublé, and ignore the fact that Bob Dylan, Ella Fitzgerald and The Beach Boys have all released records of Yuletide standards). As a long-time lover of the genre, I couldn’t disagree more. Saying we shouldn’t listen to Christmas songs is a bit like saying we shouldn’t eat pudding – yes, there are inevitably some which you don’t like, some which are definitely too saccharine, but ultimately some will be the best thing you’ve ever heard/tasted (to flog this dying analogy-horse a little further).

My first experience of Christmas music was at my school’s annual carol service. I remember clearly the excitement of seeing the final candle being lit on the Advent wreath and being acutely aware that it was literally (and liturgically) almost actual Christmas Day (of mince-pies-and-Santa fame), and this was a concept too exciting for words. As a result, I cannot hear the first few bars of ‘Once In Royal David’s City’ without a) sympathising with the poor kid who got made to do that impossible solo and b) thinking that the Big Day must be incredibly close (even if I’m listening in midsummer).

Over time, I graduated onto my parents’ collection of Christmas CDs and tapes. The fact they were physical records (not downloads) was a crucial part of their mystique. Every January they would be dutifully packed up into a corner of a box (alongside a dancing Father Christmas for which we never had the right batteries, and reams of long-since-fused fairy lights which we didn’t have the heart to throw away) and as a result they were completely unreachable until we got our decorations out. Each year I would plead with my dad to unpack them earlier, but my parents are very much of the ‘Christmas-begins-in-December’ school of thought (which is ridiculous, as we all know you should start getting excited in late June), and so I was forced to wait. 

My only access to holiday music came when my father made his annual pilgrimage to the loft – an exciting day for us all. We would stand gathered at the bottom of the ladder waiting to catch any falling boxes, decorations or parents. I would ravage my way through the endless baubles and ribbons and statuettes of reindeer (I should explain: we once had a five-hour flight delay in Lapland and needed to use up our euros. It is this we have to thank for our immaculate collection of 17 silver reindeer of varying sizes, genders and pedigrees that are now as much a part of the family as us children, if not more so) in order to find the discs.

But my efforts were richly rewarded. There I unearthed endless compilation albums with songs which would come to number among my favourites. Obviously there were the classics – the one-hit wonders that must make their creators a pretty penny in royalties (I’m looking at you, Wizzard) – and these became hymns to our yearly decorating ritual. The tree could not be put up unless Cliff Richard was crooning ‘Mistletoe and Wine’ in the background, nor the turkey cooked unless Chris de Burgh’s quirky ‘A Spaceman Came Travelling’ was reverberating around the kitchen. And of course, Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without hearing Noddy Holder scream it at you from your old, dusty Slade vinyl.

I continued to discover more and more of the genre which I came to love. ‘Little Saint Nick’ (a fine example from The Beach Boys) curiously manages to retain their summer harmonies, while still being resolutely wintry (I credit the addition of jingling bells for this, a surefire Noël hit). John Lennon’s ‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over)’ was soon added to my list, with its anthemic call for love not hate, along with bandmate Paul’s wildly different offering in the form of ‘Wonderful Christmastime’, during his oft-forgotten synthesiser phase on his 1980 record McCartney II. 

It was through listening to ‘Sleigh Ride’ that I first heard The Ronettes, and ‘The Little Drummer Boy’ introduced me to the country timbre of Johnny Cash. (His version of the festive standard is perhaps the best – either that or Bing and Bowie’s take.) I fell in love with Rufus Wainwright after hearing him sing ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’, and for years I was adamant I had discovered ‘Fairytale of New York’ before it was famous. (I have since resigned myself to the fact that this is unlikely, given I was born in 1996, nine years after its release, and I was listening to it on an album called 50 Christmas Hits. Oh well.) The list of classics from the holiday genre goes on and on: ‘Thank God It’s Christmas’ by Queen, ‘Last Christmas’ by Wham!, and how remiss would it be of me not to mention ‘PM’s Love Theme’ from Love Actually?

So next time you meet someone who claims that the whole festive oeuvre is nothing more than a cynical money-spinner which has never produced a decent tune, prescribe them some of the above, taken twice daily for two weeks, and they’ll soon see what they’re missing. Even if they are sick of them by January.