TMS Spotlight: My Favorite Christmas Song

(NBC Network / Rankin-Bass Productions)

It’s no secret I’m a lifelong lover of the holiday season. If I had to choose between summer and the holidays, I’ll go with holidays every time. The hot beverages, sweets, chilly weather and cheerful atmosphere just does it for me. And of course, since Halloween and Christmas are so popular, we also get seasonally themed music, movies and TV episodes to go with the festivities. Being an elder millennial, I pretty much stick to the standards and favorites I’ve been familiar with since youth. For music, there’s Mariah, Amy Grant, Xtina, Jewel, NSYNC, Carnie & Wendy Wilson, Celine, She & Him and The Nightmare Before Christmas OST in between Bing, Frank, Judy, Dean, and the like. While earworms like ‘All I Want for Christmas’ and ‘Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays’ are always obligatory, I noticed around college that my favorite holiday songs actually lean more traditional. ‘We Three Kings,’ ‘O Holy Night,’ ‘The First Noel,’ ‘Do You Hear What I Hear,’ ‘Carol of the Bells,’ etc. A big influence on this preference is probably the fact that I was a part of both school and church choirs growing up, and plenty of December concerts include both pop and standard Christmas tunes. Sometime in my late teens, around when I discovered Joan Jett’s rockin’ rendition of ‘Little Drummer Boy,’ I began realizing how fond I am of this particular song.

Surprisingly, ‘Little Drummer Boy’ [originally titled ‘Carol of the Drum’] only goes back to 1941, when musician/composer Katherine Kennicott Davis initially wrote the classic. But something about the ballad works so well in nearly any genre, giving it a timeless quality. Whether it’s the iconic 1958 arrangement from the Harry Simeone Chorale; the legendary duet between Bing Crosby and David Bowie from Bing’s final holiday TV special, Merrie Olde Christmas in 1977, that also counterpoints a then new song, ‘Peace on Earth;’ Joan Jett & the Blackhearts’ hard rock production which is also the final track of their hit 1981 LP ‘I Love Rock & Roll;’ Wendy & Carnie’s pop cover on their 1993 holiday record ‘Hey Santa!;’ Lauryn Hill’s R&B friendly interpretation on the 1999 compilation ‘A Rosie Christmas.’ Bob Seger, Justin Bieber, Carrie Underwood, Pentatonix, and even the indie/alt-rock band the Dandy Warhols have recorded their own versions of ‘Little Drummer Boy.’ If you can believe it, the very first act to professionally perform the song was the famous Trapp Family Singers in 1951 [yes, the family who inspired Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein’s original 1959 stage musical The Sound of Music]. The covers I revisit the most these days are Joan’s, Carnie & Wendy’s and Harry Simeone’s. All three of which reflect the sounds of the time periods they were produced in.

Christmas and movie fans will both know Arthur Rankin Jr. & Jules Bass directed and produced a stop-motion TV short film, The Little Drummer Boy (1968), based on the classic song about a boy who played a drum during the birth of Jesus Christ. While the theme is a bit darker and more serious than the duo’s Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) and Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town (1970), Drummer Boy is a clever expansion on the lyrics we’re all familiar with. It also features an updated recording of the Simeone arrangement of the title song by the Vienna Boys Choir.

‘Little Drummer Boy’ is one of those rare songs where I enjoy nearly every version I’ve come across. One of my longtime wishes is that psychedelic rock band Jefferson Airplane had produced their own spin on the ‘LDB’ back in the late 1960s. In my head, it’s the perfect companion to their iconic ‘White Rabbit’ and sounds awesome. Whether in music or on screen, this little boy is a part of the Christmas season as much as any other character.