A Perfect Christmas Playlist
Ten songs spanning the decades to help with your holiday mindset.
WHEN THE HOLIDAYS ROLL AROUND, it’s music that keeps the fun—and warmth!—in the air as much as anything else. Whether it’s the special song your grandmother played when you were helping to decorate the Christmas tree or a track you just discovered last week, music can bring us together, lift the spirits, and create a sense of belonging and wonder.
Here are ten tunes worth a listen this holiday season, each from a different decade, going back to the 1940s, plus some classical music (and a couple of bonus suggestions buried here and there). So pour yourself some eggnog—maybe with a shot of rum, if you’re of age!—kick your feet up, and give a listen to these songs of the season. (And if you feel so inclined, consider sounding off in the comments about some of your own favorites.) Enjoy!
10. Brett Eldredge, “Merry Christmas” (2024)
It’s hard not to like this song. The message is simple: Come on in, stay a while, and have a great time. Chestnuts, eggnog, family, fireplaces; this is a classic feel-good Christmas song. Eldredge has a casual, pleasing delivery, and the vintage violins at the beginning add a twinge of nostalgia.
9. Coldplay, “Christmas Nights” (2010)
Leave it to Coldplay to make a holiday song not about something that is but about something that wasn’t. Holidays can’t be all fun and games, right? Here’s classic Coldplay, bringing on a lost love/snowless Christmas tearjerker. But just about nobody does tearjerkers with as much sincerity as Coldplay—although maybe that’s my middle-aged millennial bias showing. “May all your troubles soon be gone / Oh Christmas lights, keep shining on.” Okay, I’ll take it.
8. Gloria Estefan, “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” (1993)
It sounds like a joke, but it’s not: Two Jews are sitting around Hollywood in July 1945 in a merciless heat wave and write what would become a seasonal classic.1 “Oh, the weather outside is frightful / But the fire, it’s so delightful / And since we’ve no place to go / Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow”! In this version, we’re treated not just to Estefan’s rich, sonorous voice, but also to a brass band that brings all the swagger of the ’40s.
7. Whitney Houston, “Do You Hear What I Hear?” (1987)
If the Coldplay song brings you down, Whitney Houston singing Do You Hear What I Hear? will lift you right back up. Houston’s voice shines and shimmers. Inherited from her singer mother, and honed over years of singing gospel in church, it remains one of the most natural, easy, and soaring voices America has produced. You can hear the effortless emotional power sweep over you—this is singing that can’t be taught. It just is.
6. Bing Crosby and David Bowie, “Peace on Earth / Little Drummer Boy” (1977)
Hear me out: It’s worth giving this bizarre cultural artifact a new look. Bing Crosby and David Bowie met in a London studio in 1977 to record this Christmas medley. Yes, the stilted, awkward intergenerational dialogue at the start of the interaction is eminently mockable (and if you’ve seen Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly’s parody, try for a moment to forget it!). But I’m focused on the music here: a simple arrangement of a simple tune, “Little Drummer Boy,” that often gets too much of a grandiose treatment—and here with the addition of a countermelody, sung by Bowie. That countermelody, “Peace on Earth,” was written in a rush just before the session, because Bowie disliked “Little Drummer Boy.” The two voice timbres make a wonderful contrast: Bowie’s higher-pitched voice gliding effortlessly as Crosby’s more earthbound, gravelly voice intones the solid accompaniment of the steady drum. Different generations, nationalities, and aesthetics somehow come together to form a magical four minutes.
5. The Beach Boys, “Little Saint Nick” (1964)
If you’re not grinning ear to ear five seconds into this song, I’ll eat crow. I suppose you can say that you should be grinning five seconds into nearly every early Beach Boys song though, right? Fair enough. But the jolly harmonies, the melodious tunes, the infectious rhythms all combine for a totally charming holiday romp.
4. Louis Armstrong, Benny Carter and His Orchestra, “Christmas in New Orleans” (1955)
So much of the secular symbolism of Christmas is associated with northern climes and cold weather. (Take that, Australia!) But as a New Englander who spent many Christmases in New Orleans, I’m happy to have Louis Armstrong remind us that it isn’t all fireplaces and snowy pine trees. There are also fields of cotton and magnolia trees sparkling bright—and a “Dixieland Santa Claus leading the band to a good old Creole beat.” No holiday playlist should be without this magical trumpeter and soulful singer.
3. Judy Garland, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” (1944)
Imagine: It’s 1944, and a world war rages on. Many families don’t know if they will ever have another Christmas or holiday season together. That’s the reality confronting moviegoers going out to see Meet Me in St. Louis in theaters. Even for the most unsentimental among us, Judy Garland’s impeccable performance of this song, written specifically for this scene in the movie, should be enough to make the tears well up.
2. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, “Grand Pas de Deux–Adagio” from The Nutcracker (1892)
In my first season as a full-time orchestral cellist, I was sitting first chair for my first-ever performances of The Nutcracker. My cellist colleague sitting next to me, a woman who had been at it for decades, told me that the year before her husband had left her. With her life crashing down around her, she went into the pit to play this ballet, and when they got to the famous Grand Pas de Deux, replete with soaring harp and cello melodies, she broke down, and in a flood of tears and hope, she realized that somehow, everything would eventually be okay. What a testament to the power of this music.
1. Johann Sebastian Bach, Christmas Oratorio (1734)
This one-minute long chorale, Wie soll ich dich empfangen (“How Shall I Receive You?”) from the monumental Christmas Oratorio is a distilled taste of Bach’s greatness: the purity, the simplicity, the emotional heft delivered in such a perfectly constructed package. No holiday season can be complete without Bach. I was captivated by this piece in high school when I first saw an hours-long performance of the full oratorio in Rome. This chorale will move you.
Daniel Lelchuk, a concert cellist and writer, is sales and media executive at Carriage House Violins. He was associate principal cello of the Louisiana Philharmonic and is host of the Talking Beats podcast.
Incidentally, this is not the only seasonal hit we still sing that was dashed off by two Jews during the heat of July 1945: “The Christmas Song” (also known as “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire”) has a very similar origin story.
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