Christmas Songs, Ranked

From chestnuts on open fires to braying donkeys, it's Christmas time!

(Lister’s note: I’m just ranking the songs; some versions are obviously better than others and occasionally are specified. But there are a million versions of the classics and I’m not going to rank the best version of “The Christmas Song”* because otherwise this would be 10,000 entries long.)

(* – It’s totally Nat King Cole, tho.)

1. Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) by Darlene Love

2. Sleigh Ride ***jazz band instrumental version***

3. All I Want For Christmas Is You (Mariah Carey)

4. Christmas Eve/Sarajevo (Trans Siberian Orchestra)

5. It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year (Andy Williams, of course)

6. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

7. O Holy Night

8. I’ll Be Home for Christmas

9. Winter Wonderland

10. Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow

11. The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)

12. Christmas Time is Here (Peanuts version)

13. Underneath the Tree (Kelly Clarkson)

14. This Christmas

15. Silent Night

16. Merry Christmas Darling

17. We Need a Little Christmas

18. Little Saint Nick

19. White Christmas

20. It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

21. Deck the Halls

22. Run Rudolph Run

23. The Christmas Waltz

24. Merry Christmas Baby

25. Christmas in Hollis

26. Joy to the World

27. Santa Claus is Coming to Town

28. A Holly Jolly Christmas

29. Mele Kalikimaka

30. Jingle Bells

31. Feliz Navidad

32. Step Into Christmas

33. Christmas Wrapping

34. Here Comes Santa Claus

35. Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree

36. The Holly and the Ivy

37. Sleigh Ride (with lyrics)

38. Up on the Housetop

39. You’re a Mean One Mr. Grinch

40. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays (NSYNC)

41. O Come All Ye Faithful

42. Hark the Herald Angels Sing

43. Jingle Bell Rock

44 Getting run over by a reindeer-powered sled

45. Santa Baby

46. Someday at Christmas

47. One More Sleep

48. Little Drummer Boy

49. Last Christmas

50. Wonderful Christmastime

51. Happy Xmas (War is Over)

52. Santa Tell Me – Ariana Grande

53 Blue Christmas

54. Fairytale of New York

55. Man With The Bag

56. Christmas Time is Here Again

57. Peace on Earth / Little Drummer Boy (David Bowie & Bing Crosby)

58. Father Christmas

59. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

60. Good King Wenceslas

61. Hard Candy Christmas (Dolly Parton)

62. Must Be Santa

63. Do You Hear What I Hear

64. Believe (Josh Groban)

65. Getting run over by a bus (novelty division)

66. Snoopy vs. The Red Baron

67. 12 Days of Christmas

68. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

69. Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer

70. Nuttin’ For Christmas

71. The Chipmunk Song

72. I Want a Hippomatamus for Christmas

73. All I Want For Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth)

74. Getting run over by every attendee of SantaCon

75. Frosty the Snowman

76. Jingle Bells (sung by dogs)

77. Every Pentatonix song but especially “Hallelujah” which isn’t even a fucking Christmas song WHERE DO THESE FUCKERS GET OFF WITH THAT SHIT

78. Do They Know It’s Christmas

79. Dominick the Donkey

80. Silver Bells

81. The Christmas Shoes

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About Clever Name Here dba "Black Rod" 118 Articles
Vell, Clever Name Here just zis guy, you know? Sometimes funny. Often annoyed. Once I saw a blimp.

34 Comments

  1. some lunatic at work keeps putting on sky radio…which this time of year means non stop christmas songs
    its going to take me a little while to stop twitching at the mere thought of more christmas songs (and i actually like them…2 days a year)
    i feel for the people working retail..being stuck with christmas music day in day out for months….im honestly shocked some of them come out of it relatively sane

      • eh…i dont mind christmas music…as in a song here or there
        10 hours straight of it and i start getting a little….punchie
        (its acceptable for the duration of christmas as drinking by noon is acceptable for that duration too…fairs fair…..)(coffee and baileys for breakfast still doesnt count as drinking)
        anyways…as im twitching again already…here… a christmas song

      • oh also…as i just spotted hallelujah up there
        yeah…..when did that become a christmas song?
        radio seems to think its one nowadays…but thats a recent thing too
        what did i miss?
        at least the radio here only plays the cohen or buckley versions…(or ive somehow missed it when they played the pentatonix version…probably varies by station..and i mostly prefer old fogey fm..lol)

      • im sorry…
        if you do end up murdering your manager i suggest you do it away from the cameras
        (oddly enough…ive found storage to be generally camera free…cameras watching the loading bay…and cameras watching the storefront…and a big black hole in the middle…that might be just an over here thing tho)

    • I asked a retail person about it once. She said she no longer could hear it. Literally. It took effort for her to notice what song was playing at any given time. 
       
      I actually do the same for commercials. I don’t notice or even hear them. I think it’s because when I grew up we had 3 TV stations and they all had commercials. So you just shut them out. But it goes beyond tuning them out. My wife will comment on them occasionally and I don’t know what she’s talking about. She’ll say “IT WAS JUST ON” and I’m like, nope, don’t know what you’re saying. 
       
      I have a friend that just rabidly despises commercials, and will go to any lengths to avoid them. I find that utterly bewildering. I mean, they just don’t exist for me. 

  2. You’re missing Leon Redbone’s  Christmas Island. I’ll forgive you because I’m assuming it’s his version of Winter Wonderland listed at #9

     

  3. It’s missing some songs;
    Dolly’s Smoky Mountain Christmas 


     
    I know this one’s IN there… but this is the DYLAN version!😆😂🤣🤣🤣😁🤗💖

     
    The Late, Great, Joe Diffie’s classic;

     
    The best 12 days, if you like cars;

     
    And one from my childhood, by Alabama;

     
     

  4. …I guess the sled must have concussed me because the only tune on the christmas mixtape my family break out every year that doesn’t make me flinch a little is fairytale of new york

    …but one thing I do know is it never quite feels like christmas until I hear noddy holder shriek “IT’S CHRIIIISSTMMAAASSS”…so here’s slade

  5. I grew up Southern Baptist, and my father was a Southern Baptist minister. He couldn’t make a living at it (I’ll tell that story someday, or at least what I think) so he became an elementary school teacher, like my mother. However, we were NOT allowed to forget our obligations to Jesus (bizarrely my mother was more militant than my dad), and we were all required to go to church every. single. time. the doors opened. And let me tell you, with Southern Baptists that’s a LOT. There were many weeks where we went to church 12-13 times. 
     
    That lengthy preamble is the setup for me to say that the only Christmas music to me is hymns. Period. Silent Night, O Holy Night, O Little Town of Bethlehem, etc. I don’t go in for the novelty stuff or the secular songs (Grinch songs are exempt from this statement, of course, as all people know). There are a couple other exemptions (The Christmas Song because of the story Mark Evanier tells about Mel Torme) but not very many. I’ll grudgingly tolerate your Rudolfs and whatnot, but those aren’t Christmas — they are momentary diversions or extended jokes that have gotten old. You put on hymns, I’ll listen to them forever. The other stuff wears thin in about 5 minutes. 
     
    Weird thing is that I haven’t believed in God since I was 8 (I never mentioned this to my parents). So there you go. 
     
    PS: Rocking Around the Christmas Tree is an abomination that no human should be forced to tolerate and if I ever have the chance I will expunge it from human existence and make playing it a capital offense. 

    • …there’s a church in england for which they broadcast the carol service every year (I want to say on christmas eve but it might be on the day itself) & that always starts with once in royal david’s city…the first verse being a solo…it’s pretty christmas-y in a “high church” kinda way & I have relatives that would always tune in…some had been doing it since before there was tv to speak of so sometimes they’d just stick it on the radio but it’s definitely “a thing” so I kinda know what you mean?

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