A Christmas playlist for the undead

A short sermon on the culture wars

Dear H,

The magic of Christmas songs may (and should) be ranked as follows:

1. Hymns about mankind being saved by a God-man. Here I include such hits as O Holy Night, and O Come O Come Emmanuel. In other words, things based on real magic.

2. Songs about how magical the Christmas season is. Here I mean such classics as White Christmas, and It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas. In other words, second-hand magic.

3. Songs that are loosely related to Christmas but actually feature someone getting dumped, or wanting to make the eight-legged monster. Here I mean Last Christmas, Santa Baby, and the diabolical All I Want for Christmas is You.

4. Jingles that has-been musicians barfed up because they realized they were running out of coke money. In this category I list Wonderful Christmastime, and Do They Know It’s Christmas?

This isn’t by any means a comprehensive list of Christmas songs. In the above slew you’ll note such illustrious absences as “hymns about inanimate seasonal objects” (that is, O Christmas Tree) and “ditties about fourth-rate Cold War-era claymation characters” (that is, Frosty the Snowman and Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer). But my point is simple. In terms of magic, the drop from one to two is drastic (excluding Carol of the Bells, of course); the fall from two to three is almost catastrophic; and it could be safely surmised that between three and four there isn’t any drop at all. Mainly because both of them are rock bottom.

This being said, I’m not a man who fights the Christmas wars. You can’t just cut Frosty the Snowman out of your playlist and expect somebody else to grow a soul and stop saying “Turkey Day” instead of “Thanksgiving.” These people are too far gone; and, aside from a Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus epiphany, there’s really no hope for them at all. I say let them ruin their own Christmas in peace. Jesus can save them Himself — later.

I take a “pacifist” stance here because a long time ago I was at work and wishing every customer a happy Easter. And everyone was in a good mood until somebody shot back, “It’s Resurrection Sunday.” He didn’t add you dumb shit, but that’s exactly how it felt.

Now, I don’t fault this absolute mook for wanting to focus on Jesus. And I don’t blame him for being upset that the whole thing had been hijacked by pagans and liberals after we’d already hijacked it from pagans for Jesus. Actually, after I wrote that I’m not even sure who’s entitled to grievance.

But my point still stands. He didn’t convert me to Christianity by being a jerk. And for that moment I actually became an obnoxious liberal. Because I was already on his side before he spoke, and after he spoke I wondered if I was ready to die fighting for the Easter Bunny.

Temu Jesus (or as we like to call him, Mohammed) once said there’s no compulsion in religion and I believe him. The problem is, he didn’t really believe it himself. But either way, I admit there’s a time to pile on the wives, sharpen your sword, and take back Mecca, and this year I’m in the mood for two of them. Except to me, Mecca isn’t a cube in Saudi Arabia or a standoff at the grocery store. Mecca is my church and my home. And it’s my soul. And I don’t want to be forced on anyone else, like Mohammed was. I want to be contagious because I’m sexy. (I know that sounds like herpes, so if my mom is reading this, I’m sorry).

All I’m getting at is, before you unload a salvo of Christmas hymns on the ungodly, make sure you have a twinkle in your eye. Make sure you’re ready to apologize and forgive. Make sure you’re gracious and kind. And when the whole world looks bleak, make sure you’re the kind of shoulder someone can lean on — because you know how this all ends, and you know the One responsible for the grand finale.

So for my home and anyone else’s who cares, I recommend Spotify’s Christmas choir playlist. It’s got a great selection of the old hymns, sung well by choir boys and other such quasi-Catholic respectables. Then I’d add a few lit candles, the smell of spiced wine, and some thanks to our Creator for loving us despite not only our bad deeds, bad words, and worse thoughts, but also for our (let’s be real) bad taste.

To the people who would rather celebrate the Aztecs than Columbus, and who prefer Juneteenth to the Fourth of July, God bless you — really — and I hope you enjoy the 25th of December. But you won’t enjoy it as much as I do. And I hope someday you will. Because if you're anything like me, about the third time I hear I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas, I want to blow my brains out.

Yours,

-J

December 20th, 2025

ADDENDUM:

It’s been made very clear by readers at The American Thinker that this essay may be unclear to some people. Now, it isn’t my fault that Americans don’t know how to read. But my position was never that it was wrong or distasteful to play White Christmas on Christmas — merely that it wasn’t the pinnacle of Christmas magic in general. To ignore O Holy Night or Hark The Herald Angels Sing on Christmas is borderline unChristian (at least in America). To not play Bing Crosby the first snow day of the season is 100% unAmerican.

So have fun. Enjoy your Christmas and play silly shit by 98 Degrees and Kelly Clarkson. Light a log on fire and call it a Yule Log even though nobody knows what Yule is. Tell your kids a fat man brought them gifts and slid down the chimney even though half of America can barely fit through their car doors. I really want you to enjoy (almost) every tradition you grew up with as a kid, and I have no intention of spoiling any of it. All I want to do is draw attention to the fact that some things are more meaningful than others, and to remind you, if that meaning has any place in your heart, to not forget the real magic.