For those who believe in silver bells, shining stars, swans-a-swimming and shepherds singing.

Original post date: 12.07.2022. Edited: 07.19.2025

I love Christmas music – I really do.

Not just the traditional carols – I love the whole kit and caboodle. Songs about freshly fallen snow and every version of bells imaginable – silver or jingle, chiming or caroling.  

I’m particularly fond of songs that tell stories of star-struck shepherds and gift bearing magi set to music that is so familiar to us we can’t remember a time when we didn’t know it, couldn’t hum along to it.

To this day, I still find myself snapping my fingers during the verse, “Up on the housetop, click, click, click, down through the chimney with good St. Nick”.

Count me among the crowd that can tell you how many swans are swimming and geese are laying but can never remember if there are ten pipers piping or ten lords a-leaping. Anything past the nine ladies dancing seems like a Macy’s parade trying to make a U-turn down Broadway, but it’s okay, we’re all in for “FIVE GOL-DEN rings!!!”

There’s a reason we still rise to our feet for the Hallelujah chorus. A reason candles are lit during Silent Night. A reason we hold our breath when the choir sings “Hosanna in excelsis.”

Christmas songs aren’t just for believers – anyone who takes comfort in a “Star of wonder, star of night, star with royal beauty bright, westward leading still proceeding, guide us to the perfect light” is more than welcome to join in.

For me, Christmas music - religious or secular - is like the overture to a Broadway musical. Even if you know the show by heart, it still fills you with anticipation and excitement and these days, an equal dose of nostalgia and melancholy.

After all, not every day is merry. And not every heart is light.

I think that’s why the song, “We Need a Little Christmas,” from the musical Mame, has become my holiday favorite. It means more to me as each year passes – especially this verse:

“For I've grown a little leaner, grown a little colder

Grown a little sadder, grown a little older

And I need a little angel sitting on my shoulder

Need a little Christmas now.”

May this season, more than any other, bring you “tidings of comfort and joy.”

Is there a holiday song that always stops you in your tracks — or brings back a memory?I’d love to know which ones stay with you, year after year.

“We Need a Little Christmas” is a song from the Broadway musical Mame, with a book by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, and music and lyrics by Jerry Herman.