Warning: While this is normally a family blog, this is not a family playlist.
It’s the annual dysfunctional family holiday get-together, and everyone is invited this year! The drama is about to unfold. Toes will be stepped on. Fights may break out. Folks will get drunk. You may need to drive your second cousin to the hospital after he ODs in your bathroom. And, for some reason, someone invited Mojo Nixon.
Oh, that was me.
This playlist mirrors any good dysfunctional holiday gathering. It starts with an icebreaker, gets rowdy at points in the middle, and slows down toward the end, when everyone is a little tipsy. A lot of these aren’t Xmas songs per se, as anything with the word “Christmas” in the title or lyrics, or anything tangentially related, was considered fair game.
This list has turned out to be my pride and joy of the Xmas music survival guide, so I hope you’ll enjoy it during your last-minute wrapping, hopefully with your drink of choice at hand. Have fun!
- “Merry Christmas” – Wesley Willis
- “Carol of the Bells” – The Bird and the Bee
- “Blue Christmas” – Bright Eyes
- “River” – Joni Mitchell
- “Christmas at the Zoo” – The Flaming Lips
- “St. Stephen’s Day Murders” – The Chieftains feat. Elvis Costello
- “X-mas Song” – Fireflies
- “Father Christmas” – The Kinks
- “Christmas Wrapping” – The Waitresses
- “Christmas, Christmas” – Mojo Nixon
- “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight)” – Joey Ramone
- “The Christmas Song” – The Raveonettes
- “Space Christmas” – Shonen Knife
- “Christmas Is Going to the Dogs” – Eels
- “The Spirit of Giving” – The New Pornographers
- “My First Christmas (as a Woman)” – The Vandals
- “It’s Christmas So We’ll Stop” – Frightened Rabbit
- “Fairytale of New York” – The Pogues feat. Kirsty MacColl
- “King’s Crossing” – Elliott Smith
- “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis” – Tom Waits
- “Mr. Mistletoe” – The Magnetic Fields
- “I Feel Like Going Home” – Yo La Tengo
P.S. If you need help finding the unlinked tracks, and are ethically unfettered, I may or may not know a guy…so feel free to email me.
[ Posted in » Xmas Music Survival Guide ]
