This is the Greatest Christmas Song Ever Recorded

And it’s not Springsteen

Photo by little plant on Unsplash

I may have mentioned before that on the first of every month I post a different live version of “Born to Run” on Facebook. It is a tradition I started several years ago in an effort to spread The Greatest Song Ever to as many people as possible, and I make no apologies. I will continue to do so until they put me in the ground.

There is one month out of the year, however, that I do not kick things off with Bruce: December. The official beginning of the Christmas season calls for something different (and the Christmas season starts on December 1st, even if you put your tree up on Halloween), so for this week’s Rate-A-Record I give you The Greatest Christmas Song Ever.

My mom and I lived with my grandparents when I was growing up, which meant a serious dose of the Christmas music of their era: Bing Crosby, Burl Ives, Dean Martin, Connie Francis, Perry Como, Jim Reeves, and a lot of others that still dominate the Christmas airwaves today. Yet as much as I loved some of them (especially Jim Reeves), none of them really signaled the start of the holiday season for me.

You might expect it was Springsteen’s version of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” that got me into the spirit of the holiday, but you would be wrong (sorry Alex Markham and Mark…