The Sounds of the Season

What makes a truly memorable Christmas song that stands the test of time

It’s that time of year again, when Christmas songs are about to burst onto the music scene and corner us with reminders of the season. Some people think that’s a bad thing. I don’t. True, the quality of Christmas songs is highly variable, and the oeuvre boasts – if that’s the word – some of the most annoying ditties ever penned. If I never hear The Twelve Days of Christmas again, it will be too soon, and Jingle Bell Rock’s welcome is wearing very thin.

But the Christmas season has produced irreplaceable songs both sacred and secular. The sacred category overflows with beautiful songs, too many to comment on here. Suffice it to say that, for me, that list is topped by O Holy Night.

In the secular category, Meredith Willson’s It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas seems to get better and better with every passing year since he wrote it in 1951. Michael Bublé’s version made it to No. 6 on the charts as recently as 2022.

Some secular Christmas songs aren’t Christmas songs at all, but simply celebrations of winter, such as Winter Wonderland and Sleigh Ride. This is true of the original Big Christmas Hit, Jingle Bells, first published in 1857. It contains not a word about Christmas. The strangest bit about this ubiquitous seasonal song is that its composer, James Lord Pierpont, was the uncle of multi-millionaire banking magnate J. P(ierpont) Morgan.

Johnny Marks was a savvy New York songwriter who struck gold in 1949 with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. (I’m afraid Rudolph is one of those Christmas songs I could do without.)  He continued to write Christmas songs through the early to mid-‘50s but none of them hit like Rudolph. Then in 1958, Chuck Berry did a Rudolph spin-off called Run, Rudolph, Run, which soared to the top of the charts. This, and the popularity a year previous of Jingle Bell Rock, must have alerted Marks to the commercial potential of the new rock ‘n’ roll market, because he suddenly came out with Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree, a huge hit that became a perennial. Finally, in 1964, an animated television special based on the Rudolph story showcased two new songs by Marks that sealed his fame as Mr. Commercial Christmas Song: A Holly Jolly Christmas, and Silver and Gold.

A good secular Christmas song must, in my opinion, convey the unreserved feelings of joyfulness and good will associated with the holiday. That’s what I’ve tried to do with my song, It’s Christmas (Open Your Heart). A recording of the song has been available at this website since the start, and now I’ve finally written it in piano-vocal arrangements for low, medium, and high voices. These are available for sale on the “Scores and Recordings” page. (In committing the song to paper, I realized it was a little short, so the written versions contain a verse not heard of the recording.)

I hope you enjoy my attempt at contributing to the wealth of secular Christmas songs. It may never be a Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, but maybe that’s not altogether a bad thing.

 Preview a recording and download the sheet music for It’s Christmas (Open Your Heart) here.

- Kenneth LaFave, 2024