— David Hepworth
The old scamp had been tasked with being the semi-regular singles reviewer for less than two months and it was already beginning to wear on him. David Hepworth has gone on to admit that he never cared much for handling the new releases and he will begin to really show his displeasure as 1980 progresses. ("Roll on The Eighties..." he optimistically concludes his singles review introduction: oh, how disappointed he will be)
Hepworth isn't in a very festive mood and only a handful of the new singles manage to put him in anything approaching the Christmas spirit. Even enjoyable reissues of the Booker T. & The MG's classic "Green Onions" and a curious "dustbin" raiding double A of David Bowie's "John, I'm Only Dancing" from 1972 backed with "John, I'm Only Dancing" from three years later fail to relive his ennui. But the bulk of the new stuff is dire and with the charts in general being almost entirely devoid of seasonal treats (Macca's not great but not as terrible as some would suggest "Wonderful Christmastime" was on its way to a top ten spot at the time this issue of Smash Hits was published and that's it — and it was something that his nibs described as "simple, catchy, clever and thoroughly nauseating"), it's no wonder Hepworth is so taken by a throwback to simpler times.
The Christmas number one as an event had begun in 1973 when Slade's "Merry Xmas Everybody" trounced Wizzard's "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday" (a year earlier, the John Lennon/Yoko Ono classic "Happy Christmas (War Is Over)" had been a sort of dry run for the spot but it somehow came up short behind some truly dismal competition from Little Jimmy Osmond and Chuck Berry; it probably didn't help that they weren't in Britain to do a Top of the Pops performance). This lucrative race didn't exactly spur a trend, though glam/fifties' pastiche group Mud pulled off the trick a year later with "Lonely This Christmas"; the only other big holiday-themed number that year was The Wombles with their biggest hit "Wombling Merry Christmas". (Showaddywaddy, one of Mud's main competitors in the fifties retro scene of the time, fell well short with "Hey Mister Christmas" and deservedly so)
So that makes two Christmas number ones on the bounce that were themed around the holiday but, again, this was not something everyone was suddenly getting in on. As such, Greg Lake must have figured he was a shoo in to take the title for 1975. But it couldn't dislodge Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" which was in the midst of a gargantuan two month residency in the top spot. This moment marked a sea change for the Christmas number one as members of rock's aristocracy could take the crown if they were willing to put out something grand and over-the-top, as Wings would do in 1977 with the sentimental Scots hymn "Mull of Kintyre". By the end of the decade, the Christmassy hits were no longer as potent (I'm glad I reside in Korea where Boney M.'s "Sunny" gets far more airplay than "Mary's Boy Child/Oh My Lord") and the latest rock gods to take a stab at having a seasonal smash was Pink Floyd, whose monumental "Another Brick in the Wall" proved successful but it didn't exactly fill the nation with some much needed cheer.
With all that background out of the way, how does "I Believe in Father Christmas" hold up? Would it have provided a more welcome sound in 1979 than it did four years earlier? Perhaps but this reissue nevertheless failed to chart. We weren't yet in the "Do They Know It's Christmas?"/"Last Christmas" era of Yuletide chestnuts that keep coming back so Radio 1 wouldn't have earmarked Lake's oldie for heavy rotation — and punters who shelled out for a copy the first time round weren't snapping up seconds. Yet, this could very well be the point it started to become a part of the British Festive Songbook in the minds of people like Hepworth. A reissue meant fresh product to potentially be stocked by the nation's pub jukeboxes, which were essential mediums in establishing Christmas records as modern classics.
Lake would eventually go on to claim that it's "appalling when people say it's politically incorrect to talk about Christmas, you've got to talk about the 'Holiday Season". Fair enough I suppose even though people have been using the similarly neutral 'Season's Greetings' for as long as I can remember and it's never been associated with cancel culture or any of that hooey. Given that "you can't say anything anymore" but apparently could forty-five years ago, I'm not sure what this remark has to do with the song itself. In fact, if you want to have a holiday free of offending others then that is the Christmas you deserve, isn't it?
Mixing some of Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kijé Suite with some gentle guitar picking, the track is also a meeting point between some of the more progressive Christmas numbers of the time by the likes of Mike Oldfield — whose insanely catchy minstrel romp "In Dulci Jubilo" didn't peak until after the New Year just as Lake's effort was tumbling down — and Jethro Tull and the many Yule folk records knocking about (including contributions from Steeleye Span and Bert Jansch). To have popular music's most complex genre in cahoots with its simplest may seem a gulf too wide to bridge but it gives the highfalutin an everyman's charm that it almost always otherwise lacks. Having started out as mainly an acoustic piece, it was ELP cohort Keith Emerson who suggested he insert a passage from the Russian composer's work; if Lake was looking to differentiate this solo outing from his day job, there was his visionary organist mate to reel him back in. Still, it's an effective addition and without it there it there would only be some pleasant guitar playing and a pleading vocal.
"I Believe in Father Christmas" succeeds at putting the childhood wonder of the holidays through a selection of disappointments ("they said it would snow at Christmas, they said there'd be peace on Earth") only for its magic to remain, not unlike the Whos singing Christmas carols in spite of the Grinch taking everything from them (expect, of course, for the bells in the centre of Whoville). All those promises may not come through but Christmas remains and that's a message we can do with in a thoroughly lousy year like 2020.
On the top notch sitcom Peep Show, the normally up for a shag Jez is offered the chance to have a festive romp with flatmate Mark's sister Sarah but he unexpectedly rejects her. Asked if he has suddenly gone all religious, he responds, "no, of course I don't believe in Jesus. But I do believe in Christmas. I'm a Christmasist". And there's the big takeaway from "I Believe in Father Christmas': it's not anti-religion, it isn't even anti-commercialism, it's simply very pro-Christmas. I don't have any pudding at the moment, David, but I'll happily pass round the shortbread.
~~~~~
Also of some cop
Monty Python: "Brian"/"Always Look on the Bright Side of Life"
The Pythons were a mighty clever bunch so I'll give Chapman, Idle and the rest the benefit of the doubt and assume they weren't in charge of putting this single out. But someone figured that the horrible "Brian" merited being released with an outside shot at the Christmas number one and for that they must be retroactively crowned Upper Class Twit of the Year. Hepworth likes that it takes the mickey out of rock operas and Shirley Bassey (as one YouTube comment says: "Why does this remind me of the theme from Goldfinger?") but the song is crap. I'm not sure it needs to catch viewers up on how the character of Brian went from being confused for the saviour to an awkward teenager battling puberty but I would say that since I always skip the opening credits anyway. Flip side "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" has become an funeral song cliche in this irony-obsessed age but it's much better and they should have realised that it was the song that had hit single potential — as it eventually would become, without the unfunny dreck on the other side weighing it down.
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