I started making Christmas compilations for friends long, long ago, back when mix CDs were much more of a thing. The first year I did this, I burned songs onto actual compact discs and printed actual covers and liners I placed in actual jewel cases and mailed those to people! Unbelievable. The time, the energy, the willingness to leave my house. All half-heard whispers of distant Christmas legend at this point.
Here in the present day, I simply sequence twelve of my favorite holiday tracks, sync playlists across various streaming services and send out a link. It does lack some of the charm and the “gift” aspect. In our time of endless media, I worry a bit that all I’m doing is handing out more “content” homework.
But the silver (tinsel? sorry) lining is that I’ve been able to get these out regularly for the last several years. In the physical media era, I think I only produced three different compilations across a decade. And I’m glad to be making more now because I actually do love putting a new tracklist together every year. In many ways, this is a project I undertake for my own benefit, a temporary distraction from the stalking dread of darkness and chill, and the sense that whatever is out there in it gets closer every year.
I do hope other people enjoy it, though. Even if winter is your favorite season and you couldn’t be happier than in January. I make a few concessions to exclude songs that feature words or subject matter a little too jarring for some in the general audience. But there’ll always be a couple of tells that these are primarily for me—like the inclusion of every Christmas song U2 has ever recorded (and if they release an official rarities set that includes the NYE performance of Auld Lang Syne/Streets from the Point Depot in ’89, it’s going on here too).
But the overall standard a song has to meet is that I deeply enjoy it, and it is, to me, in some way about the holidays at the end of the year. Every year I brace myself for a situation where I’ve run out of New Year’s Eve/Day songs to include at the end, but it hasn’t happened yet (so many more artists were interested in writing about New Year’s than I ever would have guessed when I started this. I haven’t included U2’s “Near Year’s Day” and probably won’t, because it doesn’t feel like a holiday season song to me).
I’m not sure what I’ll do when I’ve run out of songs from John Denver and The Muppets: A Christmas Together. But we’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.
December 2024
Yes, the title is borrowed from XTC’s new wave carol “Thanks For Christmas“. It was the first song I picked for the first “for friends” holiday playlist I ever made, and it perfectly captures the sort of relaxed sincerity that’s a theme of this project. Unfortunately, it’s not available on most streaming platforms, so like the ghosts of Christmas past, present and yet to come, “Thanks for Christmas” is only present in spirit.
Dana White 