Christmas Time is Here Again

And that means you have to listen that one, infernal EMI Christmas album wherever you go. The EMI Christmas Album.

Everyone knows that Christmas songs are rubbish. You buy them because the festive season addles your brain with wine and good will. In January they are rightly discarded. Since Simon Cowell rogered the Number 1 spot with whatever pathetic excuse for a singer he's dragged through ITV, Christmas music has got even less interesting.

There is only one good Christmas song, which is Slade's "Merry Christmas Everybody" which was made for whooping it up in the pub drinking Advocaat. The rest of the EMI Christmas Album is detritus. If you can crawl through Chris Rea singing "Driving Home For Christmas", John and Yoko crabbing out that war is over, if you want it, complete with tuneless vocals, you might despair that there are any good musical times at Christmas.

Christmas is for singing yourself, and the carols that you learned at school. That's the joy of it. It's for everyone and you don't need popstars to do it for you, unlike the rest of the year when we've all got day jobs to worry about. Christmas music can have finesse such as the carols from Kings in Cambridge, but at large in England there is a tacit acceptance that Christmas will mean wassailing from tuneless six year old girls and recorder recitals.

But Christmas is a time of good will to all men (even Simon Cowell) and so there have been some interesting songs written about Christmas. For good or bad it can be one of the most powerfully emotional times of the year, and I toast and post to that.