the second-best xmas song ever

For many years this would have come top of my list - maybe it's a sign of age.

My nomination for second-best xmas song ever is Happy Xmas (War is over) by John & Yoko and the Plastic Ono Band. Released back in '72, I first remember this song from Xmas '76 when I recorded it off the radio onto a Waltham cassette recorder, via a plug-in microphone (the Waltham was my xmas pressie that year)

Of course it's a supremely naive suggestion, that war could be over simply by unilateral choice and without genuine heart transformation, but it's still a laudable desire.

The song harks back to John & Yoko's famous bed-in in 1969 and the subsequent poster campaign that Christmas which ran the slogan War is Over (If you want it). The song picks up that slogan in its closing coda. By 1972 John & Yoko were living in New York and had entered their most stridently political phase; this song doesn't sit so easily with their other offering that year, the double album Some Time In New York City.

The NY provenance also accounts for the presence on the song of the Harlem Community Choir. The next (& final) time a choir would feature in their work would be the Yoko song Hard Times Are Over on Double Fantasy, the album that was in the charts when John died. They join Yoko for the chorus of the song. As that song opens, members of the choir can be heard calling out 'We thank you, Jesus, thank you, thank you right now' just spontaneously after a recording session; John was in the studio for the recording and got the engineer to capture their praise and used it to open the song.

One of the great delights of this particular xmas release was the b-side, a Yoko song 'Listen the snow is falling'. Perhaps her sweetest and most pop offering to date when the song was released (passing over 'Remember Love' which was the b-side of the Plastic Ono Band's Give peace A Chance). It's a romantic, lyrical and deeply moving song, narrating the personal & cultural gulfs she and John had navigated in their relationship:

Listen the snow is falling all the time
Listen the snow is falling everywhere...
Between your bed and mine,
between your head and my mind...
Between Tokyo and Paris,
between London & Dallas,
between your love and mine;
Listen the snow is falling everywhere.

It also comes complete with its own snowstorm effects which you don't have to pay extra for, always a nice bonus.

So this is xmas....so there you have it. Next time: the all-time number one (in this tiny mind).