By now, you’re probably sick of hearing the same holiday songs play over and over again on the radio. While you may know all the words to most popular holiday songs, here are a few factoids about Christmas carols and holiday songs that may surprise you!
- “Jingle Bells” was originally written to be a Thanksgiving song. The song was first published in 1857 by James Lord Pierpoint and performed at a Thanksgiving concert. It wasn’t until decades later that the song became a popular Christmas carol. “Jingle Bells” was also the first song to be broadcast from space on December 16, 1965.
- “White Christmas” is the best selling Christmas song of all time!
- Did you know The Chipmunks’ “The Chipmunk Song” is actually quite old? It was first written in 1958 and has since hit the Billboard Top 100 many times. Last year, Nielsen SoundScan estimated that it has been downloaded 867,000 times, placing it third on the list of all-time best-selling holiday digital singles in SoundScan History behind Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas Is You.”
- Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song” (more popularly known as ““Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire”) was actually written in the middle of a heat wave! Writer Mel Tormé wrote it to distract himself from the summer’s heat and finished the song in 45 minutes.
- In “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” the gift of “five golden rings” doesn’t mean jewelry, it refers to ring-necked birds like the pheasant. The fourth gift is also often called “four calling birds,” but it is actually “four collybirds,” (aka blackbirds.)