The Pogues' Fairy Tale of New York is regularly voted best Xmas song ever, but Shane McGowan has said he prefers Brenda Lee's Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree, and quite right, too.
The first piece I ever had printed was an interview with Ms Lee. You can tell from the circumstances how long ago. I wandered into the Opera House in Belfast where she was due to appear that night and asked whether I could interview her for the student newspaper, Gown. They asked me to sit to the side of the foyer. Ten minutes later she appeared. She was incredibly tiny, her voice being so huge. Four foot nine and looked even smaller with her head tilted and eyes down. "Hello," she said, adorably.
She’s 70 now, lives in Florida, spends every Xmas with her daughters Julie and Jolie, three grandchildren and husband Ronnie Shacklett, six foot four, whom she marred in 1963 after a two-year courtship. Fifty-three years and counting, they must be lovely people.
And they must listen at least once to the song every holiday, there being no escape. It’s been among the five most-played Xmas numbers in the US every year for half a century. She could live in modest comfort on the performance-rights alone, but has a stream of other perennial favourites, too, which rank among the best of the 1960s and 1970s.
She would make a lot more if she'd written the song, but that was down to Johnny Marks, who had had an earlier smash with the classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
Ms Lee’s people were what used to be called “dirt farmers”, from red-clay country in Georgia. She had three siblings. They weren’t just poor but ever on the edge of disaster. The family moved to Nashville when she was three. Her father died when she was 10. She was already the family’s main bread-winner, having begun performing at country music events at five. She has been a professional singer for 65 years.
It has to be conceded that the words of her greatest hit aren’t up to much. “At the Christmas party hop/Mistletoe hung where you can see/Every couple tries to stop/Rockin’ around the Christmas tree/Let the Christmas spirit ring/Later we’ll have some pumpkin pie/And we’ll do some caroling.”
What makes the song marvellous is Ms Lee's sensational, full-on, throaty and sweet rock and roll delivery over an arrangement dominated by thumping drums, slashed guitar and soaring, rasping sax. Even the most arthritic will scarce forbear a rhythmic twitch. And that might lead a listener on to "I'm Sorry, Sweet Nothings, Let's Jump the Broomstick and half a dozen more. As plaintive as Patsy Cline when called on, as jumping as Wanda Jackson when she wants. The only acts to out-sell her in the 1960s were Elvis, the Beatles and Ray Charles.
The Beatles were her support act on one UK/Ireland tour, the Bachelors on another. She was the first woman on the cover of Spotlight.
Ms Lee's Christmas bonus doesn't compare, of course, with the most lucrative seasonal song of all, Slade's Merry Xmas Everyone, or with second in that particular chart, Fairytale . . . Noddy and his pals pick up half a million sterling annually from the pub singalong, McGowan and Jem Finer a reputed £200,000 – each.
Silent Night is fine song, especially when sung a capella by Paul Cleary in The Olympic Ballroom on Xmas Eve an age ago, and it is royalties-free, there being no estate for which they could be collected. It's established now as an Xmas song, although its authenticity is called into question by its reference to the founding myth of Chrisianity. Xmas is far older than Christianity. In ancient times, it marked the moment when the human community felt the surging relief of survival, turned the cold corner of winter and could set its face to the sun, to spring, to the miracle of new life, when the winter stores could be broken open and joyfully shared. Food, drink and celebration of material goods defined the season of selfless generosity. Every ancient civilisation had Xmas. Today, the true tradition is more evident in the swapping of gifts than in church ceremonies.
The old German folk song O Tannenbaum has nothing to do with Xmas, either. "Tannenbaum" means fir. It's a song for the broken-hearted, the evergreen tree contrasted with the fickleness of the unfaithful. The original spirit is preserved in The Red Flag, written to the tune of Tannenbaum by Meath man Jim Connell after attending a massive march from Marble Arch to Trafalgar Square in 1891 in support of striking dockers. Eleanor Marx and Oscar Wilde walked in the front rank.
The Red Flag – not many people know this – is the official anthem of the Irish Labour Party and the SDLP. There's a modern version: "The people's flag is palest pink/It's not as red as most think/We must not let the people know/What socialists thought long ago/Don't let the scarlet banner float/We want the middle classes'vote..."
Connell's original can lift the rebel heart. But it is not fanciful to say (c'mon, it's Xmas) that as a song it doesn't compare to Rocking Around The Xmas Tree, which in Ms Lee's wondrous rendition is perfectly fashioned for a festival of friendship and acknowledgment of bounteous nature. Long may she rise on Xmas morning to the gift she has given to all.