Christmas music.
It shouldn’t be a genre.
It has no right to be one.
And yet, every December, it kicks the door in like a drunk uncle at a Boxing Day buffet, demanding attention whether we’ve invited it or not.
And somehow… we just accept it.
Try explaining Christmas music to someone who’s never heard it.
Go on. I’ll wait.
“It’s pop… but also not pop.
It’s cheesy… but also emotional.
Sometimes it’s hymns.
Sometimes it’s Carey.
Sometimes it’s the sound of Noddy Holder yelling at you from 1973 for the 400,000th time.”
“IIIItttttssss CCCCChhhhhrrrrriiiisssstttttmmmmaaaasssss!!!!”
It’s madness. But it’s our madness.
This year, for the first time, I’ve accepted I love it.
Despite how much we try and resist. You cannot help but tap your toes to Band Aid Or Wizzard, despite hearing it a million times.
🎅 A Genre That Invented Itself
Most genres have a clear origin story:
- Punk had the Pistols
- Hip-hop had the block parties
- Acid house had illegal warehouses and some lad called Dave with a Roland 303
Christmas music?
It just… appeared.
Like tinsel.
Like advent calendars.
Like Michael Bublé defrosting every year around mid-November.
It’s not built on musical rules — it’s built on tradition, marketing, and a deep, primal urge to hear sleigh bells even when you’re sitting in a traffic jam on the M60.
🎧 The Christmas Toolkit
What makes something sound like “Christmas music”?
After years of research (aka listening to far too much of it), I’ve identified the essential ingredients:
- Sleigh bells — legally required
- A children’s choir — ideally singing slightly out of tune
- Strings — emotional manipulation in audio form
- A key change — the more shameless, the better
- A music video filmed in fake snow — British budget, American enthusiasm
- Lyrics about “home”, even though most of us would quite like five minutes away from it in December. Yes, Rea I am looking at you!
You can write a song about a sandwich, add sleigh bells, and boom — it’s a Christmas classic.
🎁 A Genre of Extremes
One of the great things (and terrible things) about Christmas music is the complete lack of quality control.
My Christmas playlist is just nuts the way it goes from genre to genre.
I know we live in a world of eclectic playlists but Christmas music takes that notion a step beyond madness.
The absolute crackers are right next to the absolute car crashes.
For every Fairytale of New York, you get three:
- lazy cover versions
- novelty records made in an afternoon
- albums clearly recorded because the label needed money
And then you’ve got the endless stream of songs that sound like someone typed “festive feeling” into an AI generator long before it was fashionable.
🎶 It’s Not Just Music — It’s Memory
The reason Christmas music works is because it isn’t really about music at all. I grew up during an age where the Christmas Number one was the hottest musical topic for the whole of December.
It mattered so incredibly much in the UK (don’t think our American cousins were that bothered, correct me if I’m wrong), that record companies pulled out all the stops to get that coveted spot. It was the musical equivalent of winning an Oscar or Tony.
It’s about childhood.
It’s about shops in the eighties and nineties.
It’s about school concerts, cheap fairy lights, burnt mince pies, and that one relative who ruins Monopoly every single year.
A Christmas song can be mediocre and still hit you right in the nostalgia gland.
This is the only genre where people will openly say things like:
“I know it’s terrible, but I love it.”
And they mean it.
🎄 The December Takeover
Every year, Christmas music takes over:
- radio
- shops
- supermarkets
- TV
- your partner’s playlist
- your peace
- your sanity
By mid-December you’ve heard Last Christmas so many times you start to think George Michael is haunting you personally.
And yet… when the season ends, we miss it.
Not the songs necessarily — but the feeling.
Despite me being a Christmas bah humbug, there is still something a little exciting about the build up.
Resisting it is pointless, some things will never change. And Christmas is here to stay, like it or not!
⭐ The Only Genre That Ends Itself
That’s the real magic:
Christmas music appears suddenly, dominates absolutely everything, and then vanishes the moment the clocks hit midnight on 26 December.
Once the “big day” (or a glorified Sunday, as I call it) has been and gone, I pack them away and forget until next December,
Imagine if rock or hip-hop did that?
Imagine if The Clash only appeared between 1 and 25 March each year.
We’d lose our minds.
But for Christmas?
We accept it.
We love it.
We moan about it.
And we let it start all over again next year.
🎼 So Yes — It’s a Genre. A Weird One. But Definitely a Genre.
Christmas music doesn’t follow musical rules.
It follows emotional ones.
It’s nostalgia with a beat.
Chaos with sleigh bells.
Joy, stress, memories, glitter, clichés, and the slowly dawning realisation that Mariah Carey is inevitable.
And honestly?
I wouldn’t change it.
The Listening Log 
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