#3 - Top 25 Christmas Songs (According To Me!)

Day #23 of the POP CULTURE ADDICT'S ADVENT CALENDAR is here, and let me tell you, we're already at the Top 3 of my 25 favourite Christmas songs of all time!  It's crazy how quickly this month has flown by!

So, what do I have prepared for you today?  Well, I have another instrumental tune that definitely reminds me of Christmases past and present.  For some of you, those memories could date back for years...fifty-two of them to be exact.

What's interesting about this song is that it's not exactly considered a Christmas tune.  In fact, the song has become sort of the major theme song for a group of comic strip characters, and featured in almost every television special that they filmed since the debut of their very first one in 1965.  But for whatever reason, the time that I hear this groovy tune the most is during the month of December. 

So, strap on your dancing shoes, and dance like Snoopy, Shermy, Linus, and Lucy, because here is my third favourite Christmas tune.  And I don't really need to tell you what the title of the song it because I just revealed it to you!

Yes, the quintessential "Linus and Lucy" is my third favourite Christmas song of all time.  The reason why I chose this screenshot from "A Charlie Brown Christmas" to illustrate this song is simple.  Every time I hear it, I think of this scene.  It's a song that almost everyone in the world has heard and loved.

Well, maybe everyone except Charlie Brown, who sees the song as a distraction from his Christmas pageant direction.  But hey, even the most jaded of us Charlie Browns can eventually find the joy in this tune.

This song, as well as all of the other songs featured in "A Charlie Brown Christmas" were composed by the Vince Guaraldi Trio, and their idea to inject traditional Christmas songs with a jazz flavour was daring, but worked brilliantly for the mid-1960s.  I couldn't imagine the special would have generated the same warm fuzzies had anybody else composed the music for it.

What I like best about "Linus and Lucy" is the was that it conveys a lot of different emotions.  The song is mostly considered to be a happy song filled with celebration and enjoyment - emotions that should be associated with Christmas morning.  But the key in which the song is written is a bit unusual as it paints the song with a bit of a melancholic tinge.  It fits the mood of the special though. 

I mean, think about it.  In addition to Charlie Brown trying to direct the Christmas pageant with a bunch of whiny kids like Lucy, Violet, Schroeder, and Frieda (which would have caused me enough stress), Charlie Brown is also having a hard time seeing the meaning of Christmas through the greed and the materialism and the fake aluminum Christmas trees in shades of scarlet, cerulean, and fuchsia.

(And yes, I did consult a box of Crayola crayons to get the names of these colours.)

When you look at the song through the eyes of Charlie Brown, it's a great song that symbolizes the frustration that Charlie Brown has for the holiday, but also the journey that he takes to find the answer. 

But if you don't want to analyze the song that much, I think we can all agree that it is a beautiful tune that works for the Christmas season.  Enjoy this tune!

Now, tomorrow at #2 - and for Christmas Eve, we have a song that I debated whether to make #1.  In the end, I chose to place it at two - which works because the song comes from the sequel of a popular 1990 film.