The Christmas Minus Christmas Top 40 Countdown

What if you take the 40 most-played Christmas songs and replace them with each artist's most comparable non-holiday hit? You get one really weird playlist.

That January post-Holiday letdown is hitting hard, isn’t it?

You’ve had enough of the 40 most-played Christmas songs on Spotify I wrote about in December. But you wish you could keep just a bit of that seasonal spirit around.

I’ve got your anecdote.

Below are those 40 biggest Christmas songs—except they’re not: I’ve replaced each one with the most comparable non-holiday hit song from the same artist, based on the year, style and size of the hit. Click on each YouTube linked video and you’ll hear the same styles of music you heard incessantly in December, but with lyrics that have nothing to do with snow, Santa, or the Savior’s birth.

The Christmas Minus Christmas Countdown

#40: Laufey - Winter Wonderland

The Icelandic Chinese singer is a graduate of the Berklee College of Music in Boston and an accomplished classical cellist, but is now best known for introducing Generation Z to Jazz-based Pop. While Spotify actively promoted her rendition of “Winter Wonderland,” she’s has a hit in her native Iceland with “From the Start”

#39: Gayla Peevey - I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas (Hippo the Hero)

Did you know Gayla Peevey had other hits? Did you even know Gayla Peevey was the kid who asked Santa for that Hippo? She’s alive and well in San Diego and still has ties to the Oklahoma Zoo where she once helped raise money to buy the Hippo she always wanted. Peevey has several child-themed novelty songs, including 1954’s “Daddy's Report Card.”

#38: Kelly Clarkson, Ariana Grande - Santa, Can’t You Hear Me

Let’s focus on Ariana Grande. Her 2019 album Thank You, Next made her among the first Pop artists who stream like a Hip Hop star. It also contained a hit inspired by another classic associated with Christmas, "7 Rings."

#37: Nat King Cole - Deck The Halls

By the time he released The Magic of Christmas in 1960, were Nat King Cole’s biggest hits behind him. He had also largely left behind his Jazz cred for pleasant—albeit banal—Adult Pop, such 1962’s “Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days of Summer."

#36: Perry Como - (There's No Place Like) Home for the Holidays

Like Nat King Cole, Perry Como had to navigate a Rock ‘n’ Roll world as a Jazz-based Pop singer in the 1960s. Like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Andy Williams, he attempted tunes in tempo with the times, but with a non-threatening and familiar voice the squares could stomach, as with 1965’s “Dream On Little Dreamer."

#35: Andy Williams - Happy Holiday / The Holiday Season

Same strategy as Nat King Cole and Perry Como, but more successful with it, as exemplified in 1969’s #1 Adult Contemporary hit, “Happy Heart”

#34: Eagles - Please Come Home for Christmas

No one captured the headspace of the Baby Boomers better than The Eagles in 1978. While I could list any song here from Hotel California, the one that best matches that Please Come Home vibe is “New Kid in Town.”

#33: Gene Autry - Here Comes Santa Claus (Right Down Santa Claus Lane)

During the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, he had 53 charted singles on the Country and Pop charts. He was in 93 movies. He hosted radio and TV shows. He owned radio and TV stations. He was the original owner of the California Angels baseball team. He arguably did more to make country music popular nationwide than any artist who ever lived. At the same time The Singing Cowboy recorded his big Christmas songs, he also released his version of a popular song of the late 40s, “Buttons and Bows.”

#32: Donny Hathaway - This Christmas

Beyond crafting arguably the most revered secular Holiday classic in the African-American community, Donny Hathaway is best remembered for his duets with Roberta Flack, such as their early colab “Where Is the Love.”

#31: The Jackson 5 - I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

I get a little creeped out when Michael declares, “I’m gonna tell my daddy!” Tragically, we now know Joe Jackson can’t be trusted to respond non-violently with such information. Let’s focus on some better parental relationships in 1970’s “Mama's Pearl.”

#30: Bruce Springsteen - Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town

Recorded in 1975, The Boss’ live proclamation of St. Nick’s travel itinerary didn’t gain widespread popularity until half a decade later, when Springsteen was also enjoying his biggest hit to date with “Hungry Heart.”

#29: Burl Ives - Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer

Yes, he voiced the iconic TV special in addition to singing it. But Burl was a successful folk and country singer long before recounting the most famous reindeer of all. One of those mid-1960s Country crossover hits is "Call Me Mr. In-Between."

#28: Bing Crosby - Winter Wonderland

He was probably your great-grandfather’s favorite recording artist. He released 409 singles during his career from 1927 to 1975. Like his better remembered contemporary Frank Sinatra, Bing realized that the advent of the microphone meant you could sing into your listener’s ear in her living room, not belt out for the back row of Carnegie Hall. He croons in your ear just as he did in your grandmothers on "It's Been a Long, Long Time."

#27: Bing Crosby, The Andrews Sisters - Mele Kalikimaka (Merry Christmas)

Among the WWII rubble, American soldiers discovered the Germans had invented a way of recording sound onto magnetic tape. Bing Crosby heard about it—and immediately recognized that this contraption would allow him to pre-record his radio shows. That meant he wouldn’t have to do the whole show again three hours later for west-coast listeners. That meant he could pre-record his radio show when it was good for him, not when the network scheduled it. NBC balked. “The public won’t stand for canned programming.” Uh huh. Crosby bolted for ABC and ultimately helped start Ampex to manufacture tape recorders. During that time, he also dropped “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening.”

#26: Vince Guaraldi Trio - Christmas Time Is Here

What’s more unlikely than an actual Jazz musician scoring a children’s cartoon Christmas special? Having a actual Jazz musician have an actual Top 40 hit with 1962’s “Cast Your Fate to the Wind.”

#25: Frank Sinatra - Jingle Bells

Like Crosby, Sinatra figured out that the microphone is a musical instrument. He understood that it allowed him to croon mere inches away from his listener—a trick Billie Eilish reduced to milometers. So important was his instrument that Frank once threw a new microphone across a stage in Vegas and demanded his usual Shure microphone return. He croons for you on “The Birth of the Blues.”

#24: Nat King Cole - Joy To The World

Another early-60s Adult Pop trifle from a performer too old to be culturally relevant, but not yet old enough to be the icon we know he is today, “Ramblin' Rose.”

#23: Dean Martin - Baby, It's Cold Outside

Ok, literalists, if you thought he was really spiking her drink, you really will despise the violence in “Ain't That a Kick in the Head?”

#22: Mariah Carey - Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)

Had you asked someone in 1994 which Mariah Carey song would everyone still sing three decades later, it wouldn’t be her remake of a 1960s girl group’s Christmas song. Surely, it would be a song of such timeless inspiration that it would rival The Greatest Love Of All as the winning act at middle school talent shows. Surely, we’re all still singing “Hero.”

#21: The Jackson 5 - Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

All the energy. All the perfection. All the innocence. It’s there in every note of 1970’s “I Want You Back.”

#20: John Lennon, Yoko Ono - Happy Xmas (War Is Over)

Walking through Southpoint between the Apple Store and Barnes & Nobile, hearing “war is over,” I think of Gaza.. and Syria… and Lebanon… and Ukraine… It’s suddenly ironic and sad. Not the vibe for starting my Christmas shopping on December 23rd. John being John has to rub it in, asking, “and what have you done?” Even though he just has to point out, “pretty soon you’re gonna be dead,” John does give us a contemporanious counter-balance with "Instant Karma!"

Think I picked the wrong Chrimstas minus Chrimstas song? Tell me the secular song you’d substitue down in the comments.

And now, on with the countdown…

#19: Eartha Kitt - Santa Baby

For a time known for bland wholesomeness, they sure did know how to do sexy in the 1590s when you knew where to look. Eartha Kitt is on brand for 1953’s “C'est Si Bon”

#18: Elvis Presley - Blue Christmas

He was the hottest recording star in the world when we recorded “Blue Christmas” in 1957. Just three years earlier, he was a high schooler living in public housing. Being poor made him relatable. More importantly, being poor meant he knew the songs only the poor kids knew—both the white and the black kids. That’s how we got “Hound Dog” and "Heartbreak Hotel." By ‘57, that grit was gone. “Blue Christmas” sounds a lot more like Perry Como than Little Richard. So does “(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear.”

#17: Darlene Love - Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)

They’re Phil Spector songs. That Wall of Sound. That early 60s girl group vibe. They’re the creation of a tragically disturbed mind. Among his more benign evils was the lie that Darlene Love was really The Crystals on “He's a Rebel.”

#16: Perry Como - It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Once that snowstorm clears up, “Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes.”

#15: Frank Sinatra - Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

Those giddy girls who made Sinatra a teen idol had moved on by the time he requested winter precipitation in 1950. But Frank—formerly a neighborhood boxer—knew how to get his ass off the mat. By 1953, his first of several comebacks was underway, now appealing more to men than to women with, “I've Got the World on a String”

#14: Michael Bublé - Holly Jolly Christmas

Usually, you become an Adult Contemporary hit maker because your young fans grow up with you. Think Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, and Bruno Mars. Michael Bublé is that rare artist who become your mom’s favorite singer without any young person liking him first. Barbara Streisand, Engelbert Humperdinck and Michael Bolton did it last century. Hardly anyone has done it this century. But Bublé did, as he did on 2005’s “Home.”

#13: The Ronettes - Sleigh Ride

Girl Groups were an intensely popular but very short lived chapter in Rock ‘n’ Roll’s history, sandwiched between The Day The Music Died in 1959 and Beatlemania in 1964. The Hippies that flooded Woodstock were tweens when The Ronettes released “Sleigh Ride.” Late 60s Rock would ultimately define their formative years. But they were tweens when The Ronettes were huge, the perfect age for forming family holiday memories. Lost along the way for many, sadly, is one hell of a tune, 1963’s "Be My Baby"

#12: Kelly Clarkson - Underneath the Tree

From 2013, it’s one of the only 21st century Christmas songs finding a place in the Christmas cannon. On track to join the Classic Hits cannon is 2011’s "Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)"

#11: José Feliciano - Feliz Navidad

Look, it’s hard to understand how a guy who made easy-going remakes of Rock hits was cool. It’s hard to understand how a Puerto Rican contemporizing the national anthem at the 1968 World Series game was somehow controversial. But the late 60s weren’t quite what those ex-Hippies told us it was. It was dichotomous. And while his time was already over when we penned his Spanglish Christmas classic, you’ll have to trust me that he still was very much cool when we remade The Doors’ “Light My Fire.”

Before we reach the Top 10 Chrimstmas Minus Christmas titles…

Want insights into Today’s Hits and Yesterday’s Favorites in your inbox as soon as I dorp them? “Pick the “FREE” option to subscribe to Graphs About Songs.

#10: Nat King Cole - The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas To You)

Unlike his previous two entries released in 1960, “The Christmas Song” (1946) stems from a time when Nat King Cole and his style of Jazz Pop were both very much in style, as exemplified on “It's Only a Paper Moon” from a few years later in 1952.

#9: Dean Martin - Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

At the same time he was summoning snow in 1959, Deano was remaking an Italian-language song that had catapulted to #1 on Billboard’s new Hot 100 chart, Domenico Modugno’s "Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu.” For a singer who made his Italian heritage a key part of his act, there was no way he wasn’t going to record “Volare.”

#8: Bing Crosby - White Christmas

It’s not the snow in his hometown he misses, it’s the “Dear Hearts and Gentle People.”

#7: Burl Ives - A Holly Jolly Christmas

Apparently someone kissed her once for Burl and just kept kissing her, because his contemporaneous and biggest Hot 100 hit was, “A Little Bitty Tear.”

#6: Michael Bublé - It's Beginning to Look a Lot like Christmas

For someone as mature, well dressed, and whose music you can purchase at Kohls, it seems a bit late in life that he still “Haven't Met You Yet.”

#5: Wham! - Last Christmas

Unlike so many songs here you’ve never heard, your local Classic Hits or Soft Rock station probably just played, “Careless Whisper.”

#4: Andy Williams - It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

It would be relegated to late 60s Adult Pop obscurity had Beyoncé not sampled it for "Hold Up,” in 2016, “Can't Get Used to Losing You.”

#3: Bobby Helms - Jingle Bell Rock

Unlike other iconic Christmas artists, Bobby Helms’ career was both short-lived and lackluster. In 1957, the same year he rocked the night away, Helms—who was really a Country singer—had his biggest regular hit with “My Special Angel.”

#2: Mariah Carey - All I Want for Christmas Is You

The Energy. The vocal talent. The Fun. I get why so many people start their Holiday Season with the self-proclaimed Queen of Christmas, even though I personally would love to never hear that song again. But you get all that Carey talent on her contemporaneous hit “Fantasy.”

#1: Brenda Lee - Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree

“How does a 14-year-old sound like she’s 80?” That’s what my teenager pondered while enjoying the most-played Christmas song in the U.S.A. on Spotify. Her voice—with age beyond its age—helped Little Miss Dynamite score 12 Top 10 songs between 1958 and 1962. The year after she celebrated the season in the new, old-fashioned way, she had her first Top 10 hit with “Sweet Nothin's”

By 1966, it had been three years since Lee’s last Top 10 hit. She came close (#11) with a song that would already be famously forgotten in 1972.

That year, Dutch rockers Golden Earring drove all night with their hands wet on the wheel in “Radar Love,” the quintessential horny long-distance lover song.

And when the “radio played that forgotten song,” what song was it?

None other than Brenda Lee’s, “Coming On Strong.”

Well there you have it, the 40 most popular Christmas songs without the Christmas.

If you’re made it this far in our Christmas minus Christmas countdown, you’ll love Chris Molanphy’s “Chestnut Roasters” edition of his Slate podcast Hit Parade. Chris goes deep into the increasingly forgotten careers of artists who are now primarily known for their Christmas songs. Check it out here.

I’ll be back next week to recap the biggest hits of 2024. Subscribe to the “FREE” option below to see it first.

Data sources for this post:

• Spotify Charts (2019-2023 for the USA): https://charts.spotify.com/charts/overview/us

• The Billboard Hot 100: https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100

• Wikipedia’s Billboard Hot 100 Top 10 singles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Billboard_Hot_100_top-ten_singles

• Singles discographies from Wikipedia.