Sixties Christmas USA: A Christmas Weekend Playlist

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Merry Christmas! As I nurse my first Yuletide sunburn down here in sunny Melbourne, I’ve got Christmas music in constant rotation. Funny thing is, I used to hate the stuff. Like all-caps Scrooge-level HATE every single jingle of Christmas music. What turned me around?

The songs on this list, that’s what. Can there be any doubt that the 1960s in America was the Golden Age of Christmas music? Maybe there was some other single decade back in Merrie Old England or Tannenbaum-bedecked Germany that birthed more immaculate classics, but I doubt it. The '60s had the perfect overlap of old-guard pre-rock pop stars, still in fine voice, with brilliant rock and soul and country acts at the absolute peak of their creativity. And the rules of showbiz still dictated that everybody had to record a Christmas album. There’s never been another time like it.

Here’s a stocking stuffed full of roasting chestnuts, also compiled in a YouTube playlist. Hope it’s the right size!

Stevie Wonder - “What Christmas Means to Me” (1967)
Elf brought this joyous uproar to a wider audience. It deserves a wider one still.

Loretta Lynn - “To Heck With Ole Santa Claus” (1966)
Loretta was never one to put up with a man who let her down.

Vince Guaraldi Trio - “Skating” (1965)
The better-known “Linus and Lucy” has been used as the Peanuts theme ever since, so it’s lost its Christmas evocations. But this lovely instrumental is still pure musical snowfall.

Bob Seger & the Last Heard - “Sock It To Me, Santa” (1966)
Yes, that’s the Bob Seger fronting this roaring garage-funk James Brown parody. Don’t get our @matthew started on early Bob Seger.

Nat King Cole - “O Holy Night” (1960)
Tough to choose between this version and Mahalia Jackson’s. They’re both majestic, but I went with Cole because this list needed a little more smooth velvet. Give yourself a gift and and listen to hers, too.

Johnny Cash - “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” (1963)
Johnny Cash, backed by the Carter Family, wrestles with the chasm between the ideals of peace on Earth and the real state of the world in his version of this 1872 standard. We’ve all been there - but our ruminations have never sounded this powerful.

Martin Denny - “Exotic Night” (1968)
The exotica composer turns the ancient “Greensleeves” into '60s lounge atmospherics.

Otis Redding - “Merry Christmas Baby” (1967)
The peerless Stax house band adds some jingle to its soul slink, and Otis embodies the sincere country boy wishing his lady the best.

The Ventures - “Silver Bells” (1965)
The Ventures could have been as good a folk-rock band as the Byrds - and check out that crazy vocoder.

Ella Fitzgerald - “Sleigh Ride” (1960)
This prancing melody seems to lend itself to unbearably twee, cutesy renditions. Not a problem with Ella. Another one featured on the Elf soundtrack, which is a coincidence, but I wouldn’t care if it wasn’t because I love Elf.

Buck Owens - “All I Want for Christmas is My Daddy” (1968)
It wouldn’t be Christmas without a little country heartbreak. Buck recorded a stack of great Christmas songs, both solo and with Susan Raye, usually in an upbeat “here’s how we do it down the farm” mode. None of the others ever sounded this forlorn.

The Sonics - “Don’t Believe in Christmas” (1965)
These Pacific Northwest cretins sympathize with Loretta Lynn in this Chuck Berry rip. A blazing guitar, sax, and organ attack rips into every Christmas myth, from mistletoe that doesn’t win you any kisses, to the secret alcoholic origin of Rudolph’s red nose.

John Fahey - “Joy to the World” (1968)
Southern guitar artist John Fahey’s Christmas album The New Possibility sounds both unmistakably 1968, and somehow timeless: just him and his guitar chiming like all the angels in Heaven.

Darlene Love - “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” (1963)
This Phil Spector-built colossus was the one that finally forced me to admit that not all Christmas music was bad. Not just the finest Christmas song of the 1960s, one of the best pop records ever.

All the best to Mehtizens everywhere! Meh all your Christmases be rockin’!

We bring you more figgy pudding in these playlists right here: