Driving Home for Christmas: schmaltz, slush and sentiment

It’s that time of year when a very special kind of danger lurks around every corner. You don’t know when and where this peril may next appear. Could it be in this shop? Is that taxi going to be today’s chariot of doom? Are you likely to be trapped at a table in yonder cafe when it strikes?

We speak, of course, of Chris Rea's Driving Home for Christ- mas. In a hokum parade of schmaltz, slush and sentiment, it takes the prize for worst seasonal song of all time. It's a tune which brings such prize chumps as Jeremy Clarkson and Nigel Farage to mind for various illogical though plausible reasons.

You know – you just know – that it’s a song beloved by numpties of that sort at this time of year, the type of executive class men who wallow in the size of their saloon cars. It is one of the very few songs that has me diving for the off switch as soon as its first brute-ugly notes begin to chime.

I know I'm not alone in hatred for particular seasonal songs. Anyone who follows chief Waterboy Mike Scott on Twitter knows he spends every December on high alert to avoid the travesty that is Last Christmas. Others shudder when it comes to Do They Know It's Christmas? on the radio. Then again, others shudder too, for far different reasons, when it comes to that Band Aid carry-on.

But don’t take this disdain to be evidence of latent bah- humbug tendencies. There’s actually a gazillion great Christmas songs out there if you know where to go look for them. It has always been a thing for pop stars to record Yuletide tunes, but increasing numbers of interesting artists have begun to turn their studio time towards festive odes.

Okkervil River's Listening to Otis Redding at Home During Christmas is one such triumph. Included on their 2002 album Don't Fall in Love with Everyone You See, it's a timeless, lonesome, melancholic fireside whisper of a song. There might not be any of the usual Christmas imagery or tropes contained within its verses, but the song does more to summon up feelings peculiar to this time of year than the usual suspects.

Other feelings peculiar to this time of year come to mind when considering Lord Beginner's Christmas Morning the Rum Had Me Yawning. There will be many who will plus-one what the calypso kingpin had to say back in 1939 about the state he found him- self in on the big day. Probably a much better state than finding yourself driving around the M50 with bloody Chris bloody Rea on the bloody radio.

Every year, there are new additions to this canon. From Irish acts such as Little Green Cars (Reindeer With a Broken Leg) or Katharine Philippa (Bethlehem) to indie heavyweights like Belle & Sebastian, The xx and The Shins, there's always plenty of much more interesting tunes to go around.

YOU'VE GOT TO HEAR THIS
Maceo & The Macks Cross the Track (We'd Better Go Back) The funk was fierce in 1975 when Maceo Parker (above) and his dudes laid down this incendiary track that kickstarted the rare groove buzz. All killer and no filler as Parker and co blow up a storm.

ETC
They're coming home. Christmas is when Irish folks worldwide pack their bags and head for the homeland. This influx will include many musicians, DJs and producers and a clatter of them will play the Emigrant Disco at The Sugar Club in Dublin on December 20th.