Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast
I am a proud lover of Christmas pop music. Whether it’s New Kids On the Block’s “Funky, Funky, Xmas,” Taylor Swift’s “Christmas Tree Farm,” or Doja Cat’s cover of “Santa Baby,” give me a holiday tune by a popular artist and I’ll eat it up.
But I think we can all agree: different Christmas pop songs occupy very different roles within our holiday playlists. To that end, I’d like to propose three main categories of Christmas tunes. The first is Christmas comfort music, which encompasses songs that sound like cuddling under a blanket in front of a fire. Others feel more like the ugly Christmas sweater you might proudly wear to family gatherings—these are the tunes I lovingly call Christmas cringe. Still others have the taste of the 18th-century figgy pudding recipe I annually concoct during the holiday season; these are the Christmas cosplay songs that recreate the musical aesthetics of bygone eras.
Each category has a special place in the pantheon of holiday music, but each also has its own unique relationship to how pop music is composed, and to the sounds American audiences have been trained to associate with Christmas. And taking a deeper dive into how these different tunes tug at our holiday heartstrings can even predict how the genre might change over the next few years, giving us a glimpse into our Christmas musical futures.