Why Christmas songs are the only genre we save for one month a year
Picture this: it's a warm July night on your friend's terrace, cicadas hum, and the faint smell of coconut sunscreen wafts up through your collar.
From the living room speaker comes a husky, “It was Christmas Eve babe”.
Fairytale of New York? Seriously?
You freeze mid-sip of your iced drink. It doesn't just feel out of place; it feels... wrong. Not pineapple-on-pizza wrong, but unsettling in a way that makes you question reality.
But why? A lot of these songs (Last Christmas is practically an anthem of heartbreak) aren't really about Christmas; they're just set against it.
So it leads to the question: why do we only listen to ‘Christmas' songs during December?
The unwritten rules of festive hits
During December, your ears, like it or not, will be decked by the boughs of Mariah Carey. Christmas music is a force of nature, filling every space from supermarkets to TV ads during the obligatory airing of Home Alone 2.
Then, like clockwork, the calendar flips to January, and those same songs vanish. Locked in a metaphorical vault with the front door wreath and leftover Quality Street.
But why?
There isn't the same level of exclusion for summer songs. Come autumn, people aren't skipping past Calvin Harris' Summer as they might a Christmas song. And there are even songs with ‘summer' in the title that have charted in the winter months.
Created by context
Here are my cards on the table: Christmas songs are, in a word, magical.
Hearing Slade or Wizzard is a direct portal back to Christmas as a kid. I'm back in 1994, cross-legged by the fireplace, surrounded by the glow of wonky tree lights, debating whether I can manage another bite of mum's gingerbread while The Snowman flickers on the not-so-flat-screen TV.
No other genre is this specific — this ingrained in the rituals of a single time of year.
But herein lies the paradox.
If these songs feel so good, why don't we extend their welcome into, say, April? Why is All I Want for Christmas Is You part of the furniture in December but a social faux pas in June?
The short answer: context.
When less is more
Christmas songs are less about the music itself and more about the experience they create.
Remove the bells, for example, from East 17's Stay Another Day, and you've got a song about longing and heartbreak. It doesn't exactly scream good times and get-togethers with loved ones.
But they work because they're tied to everything else we remember as kids experiencing Christmas — moments of innocence, free from the responsibilities of adult life.
There's another layer to this, and it's pure economics: scarcity. Adam Smith would have appreciated the strategy here. Christmas songs are a limited edition, like the Starbucks red cups or an advent calendar's dwindling chocolates.
The rarity builds anticipation.
When radio stations unleash Christmas songs in late November, it's like opening a time capsule — we might have changed, but the songs haven't, and there's a comfort in that.
Why we need the seasonal bubble
Back to our original scene.
Playing these songs outside of December risks diluting their emotional impact, turning nostalgia into monotony.
It's keeping the songs locked in their December bubble that preserves the magic.
And let's be real. Given the sensory intensity of the Christmas season, even the biggest Mariah Carey fan is ready for a palette cleanser from the 26th.
The tradition worth keeping
So, maybe it's not how we feel about the songs themselves, but how the songs make us feel.
They bring back who we were, who we loved, and what we dreamed of when we still believed in the magic of Santa.
Keeping them confined to December sharpens the magic, like the fine china you only bring out for special occasions.
I want that magic to hit as hard as possible. So, I'll be keeping them locked in the attic with the artificial tree, ready to unleash the same old concentrated burst of nostalgia next year.
After all, in a world that keeps moving faster, Christmas music is a rare thing that stays the same. And if that's not magic, I don't know what is.