Hand Painted

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.

Originally released as a fanclub-only single in 1997, Tennant and Lowe's Christmas offering is a sweetly sardonic dance banger which name-checks Bing Crosby and ‘this year's festive number one.’ It captures the mix of ambivalence and warmth that Christmas can somehow conjure up pretty perfectly.

Only Al Yankovic could find Christmas cheer amid nuclear annihilation. Al recorded this early hit using Phil Spector’s patented ‘wall of sound’ production in an effort to replicate the Darlene Love and Ronettes classics… and oh by golly worked. Al’s jaunty song – complete with air-raid sirens harmonizing with jingle bells – sounds completely authentic despite his vintage Cold War paranoia and talk of nuclear mutants roaming the Earth. In fact, it makes a strong case for an Omega Man holiday special.

This funky-as-you-like number might sound like rare groove from ’60s America, but is actually the product of mid-’90s German band The Poets of Rhythm, playing under a different name. Who cares about the provenance, however, when the beats are this big?

This is Christmas cynicism at its most tuneful. Intended as a denouncement of the increasing commercialisation of the festive season, Greg Lake inadvertently crafted a folk-prog Christmas classic. Ironically, it’s now one of the go-to songs for cash-cow Christmas compilations.

It took ABBA – or maybe it was their digital hologängers – 40 years to drop new music. Shockingly, it took them even longer to drop a Christmas song. For all its newness, ‘Little Things’ would have sounded like a throwback even if it was released back in the band’s heyday of 1973. Does that mean ABBA is timeless or that Christmas music is unchanging? It doesn’t matter: When ABBA does twinkly and sentimental, it’s gold.

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.

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.

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.