Whoever said the devil has all the best tunes was an idiot. The Christmas music thundering out of a loudspeaker near you AT THIS VERY SECOND proves that.
Once upon a time, Bing Crosby's White Christmas was the best-selling single ever, unchallenged for decades. That thoroughly appropriate situation obtained until 1997, when Bing was usurped by Elton John's shameless re-release of the odious Candle in the Wind. Alright Satan, you win this one.
But sales aren’t everything, and in every other respect the armies of Christmas light have the upper ground and the musical superiority. Can you recall the stunning emotional wallop you felt the first time you heard Fairytale of New York, for example? Don't you still feel it, just a little, at your first annual hearing, like the cuckoo that announces spring?
If you're more of an indie kid, you probably have a soft spot, like me, for The Waitresses' 1981 oddity Christmas Wrapping. For the lounge lizards out there, the Rat Pack have slurred their semi-respectful way through the greats: Let It Snow, The Christmas Song, Winter Wonderland, Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, and all the rest. For jazz aficionados, the great Louis Armstrong gave us the original Cool Yule, and his dream lives on; for alternative rockers, there's any number of compilations featuring post-modern or ironic takes on Christmas staples by revered counter-culture icons, and some of them are even good.
Yes, there are stinkers. Chris Rea's bafflingly popular yawnathon, Driving Home for Christmas, leaves me colder than Nicole Kidman's lips. And there's a special place in Hades reserved for Cliff Richards, despite his lifetime of public piety, purely on the basis of Mistletoe and Wine.
But even Mariah Carey, a woman classed by toxicologists as the world's second-leading cause of ear gangrene, has a barnstorming Christmas classic in All I Want for Christmas is You. And in a bizarre recent development, the famously cantankerous Bob Dylan has put out a delightfully weird Christmas album for charity.
This is all secular stuff. We haven't even mentioned the mind-bending majesty of serious ecclesiastical music. But do yourself a favour this week and find a choir somewhere singing Hark, the Herald Angels Sing in multi-part harmony. Then go and listen to the Ronettes singing Sleigh Ride. Sure, the man behind this masterwork is a raving lunatic who's currently serving life for murder, but the track remains a stone-cold slice of Christmas genius. The devil never had a chance against talent like this. Ringadingalingadingdongding!