Ivan Wise discusses Christmas music that should be better known.

Christmas is our most sturdily conservative tradition, and this December you will hear once again the same music that you have heard every other Christmas. The usual suspects dominate playlists in shopping malls, on radio stations and at parties. But how did we end up with this apparently immovable canon of Christmas songs? And what other Christmas music is out there that we should be listening to instead? George Ratcliffe Woodward, lyricist of Ding Dong Merrily on High, gets a rap makeover, Nikolai Gogol’s short story Christmas Eve inspired operas by Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov and Tom Lehrer arrives to throw some cynical scorn over the Christmas schmaltz.

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Christmas Music

Better Known