The Best Christmas Song

It’s not Mariah Carey’s seasonal harbinger, nor My Chem’s little gremlin cover, nor the Trans Siberian Orchestra’s hard-rock rendition of “Carol of the Bells” which is a Christmas song in the same way Die Hard and American Psycho are technically Christmas movies. It’s not even the very good “Christmas at 22” by The Wonder Years.

The best Christmas song begins with the man himself saying, “Welcome to my Christmas song!” As my friend and comrade Rachel Fucci observed: Absolutely knee-knocker levels of dick swinging.

The best Christmas song is obviously “Step Into Christmas” by Elton John. He’s the rockstar every other imagines themselves to be. Every song he writes is a balls-out banger. Everyone wants whatever he’s having, and no one is ever having as good a time as El J.

I swear I’m not a curmudgeon. I find myself singing Christmas tunes long after and before the appropriate season. I just think that Elton John made the only one that wouldn’t be annoying to overhear at a gas station in mid-April, and that would actually be fun to see performed live.

So many Christmas songs fall short of true revelry, instead letting the metonymy of seasonal celebration stand in for authentic joy. If you live in a house where a Christmas tree can sit in the center of a room and be comfortably rocked around, then I’m sorry we have nothing in common and nothing to say to each other.

Sad Christmas songs are copouts. Yes, we’re all sad during the holidays and putting on a front because the price of admission is alienation. Elton “I Lived Through The AIDS Crisis and Watched All My Dear Friends Die” John absolutely rejects self-pity and seasonal-affective-depression. Fuck that. We’re having fun. Uncle Elton said so. The admission is free.

The best Christmas song sounds so little like a Christmas song. No schmaltz. Only passing nods to the genre’s instrumental demands. Absolutely fucking GROOVY bassline. Full drum kit. Sweet as honey harmonies. It’s like any other BElton John song; it just so happens to be aimed at a singular holiday. Have a bacchanal. My dearly departed high-school Latin teacher could easily cheer “Io! Saturnalia!” to this beat.

I know I always talk about basslines in these, because it’s one of the few instruments I can speak on with any real experience, but this line is so TIGHT. The way it pops in the outro? Fresh to death. This is part of why I love Elton John’s composing—across his career he’s always let every instrument have a ball. His de facto maximalism is what makes every track fun to hear, even when it’s sentiment is familiar.

It’s a genuinely funny song: imagine singing the lines, “I'd like to sing about all the things, your eyes and mind can see,” and then not bothering to list a single wintertime cliche. Not bothering to list anything at all! Man gets lost in his own catchy hook. “I’d like to sing about all that, but I’m too busy laying down this hot melody.” It’s not like you don’t already know what Christmas looks like anyway. What use would retreading that ground be?

My brother in Christmas didn’t bother even writing a third verse, just brings back the welcome verse because it was a barn-burner the first time, and now even the newly-inducted are invited to singalong. Come on, you know you want to.

Elton “I’ll Play This Piano With My Elbows If I Want To” John knows how to make guileless hype happen, and we should all be thankful he gave us one Christmas song incapable of becoming white noise. It’s not as weird as “Wonderful Christmastime”, it’s not as memey as Mariah’s, it doesn’t have the Nat King Cole Classic Pedigree, it’s just a hearty feel-good rock song by a man who simply cannot have a bad time.

Happy Holidays. I hope you got me something good. See you next year!