Dr. In The Conversation, Joana Jacob Ramalho (UCL SELCS) presents a selection of sad Christmas songs that research shows can help cure the winter blues.

Studies suggest that sad music can ease the effects of seasonal stress. It can provide comfort, relieve loneliness, and promote good mental health by providing a way to process negative emotions.

Dark Christmas carols can therefore resonate with those who cannot reflect their holiday experience in escapist fantasies Mulled wine and Holly. Researchers identify loneliness or being without family as key factors in low spirits at Christmas – findings that guide my musical suggestions here.

If you’re prone to the winter blues, adding these alternative songs to your playlist can lift your mood.

As Britain recovered from the Great Depression (1929–1939), composers Michael Carr, Jimmy Leach and Tommie Connor wrote The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot (1937). The song tells the disheartening story of a fatherless “boy” who wakes up on Christmas morning to find that he has not received any presents.

Canadian filmmaker Mitchell Kezin found the song so disturbing as a child that he asked his mother to play Nat King Cole’s rendition several times in the hope that the story would change. Kezin grew up to be a collector of Christmas music, and the disturbing song is the starting point for his 2013 documentary about underrated Christmas songs.

Kezin describes the song as “cathartic” and emphasizes the role of sad music in recalling memories and regulating mood.

The childhood wish for a Santa Claus who never returns appears in Eddy Arnold’s Will Santa Come to Shanty Town (1949) and takes on fatal contours in Red Sovine’s spoken-word Billy’s Christmas Wish (1978).

In “Hard Candy Christmas” (1978), written for the musical “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” and popularized by Dolly Parton in the 1982 film adaptation, Carol Hall offers her perspective on the hardship. “Hard Candy” refers to hard times when families could not afford more expensive gifts and gave their children hard candy at Christmas.

The text mixes current worries (“hardly survive tomorrow”) with a wish list for the future and ends with a reassuring “I’ll be fine.”

Longing for togetherness

Less hopeful is the classic Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, which Esther (Judy Garland) sings to her little sister Tootie (Margaret O’Brien) in Vincente Minnelli’s musical Meet Me in St. Louis (1944).

Introduced by the nostalgic chords of a music box, Esther tearfully explains that the family “must get through somehow” until they can be together again – “if fate allows” (this is a more palatable version of Hugh Martin’s original poem).

Significantly, this sad number ends with Tootie’s metaphorical murder of her family, represented by the snow people, whom she violently destroys.

The longing for hearth and home is also expressed in another war classic, I’ll Be Home for Christmas (1943), which was banned by the BBC as demoralizing. In 1946, this melancholy song letter inspired young songwriter Frank Pooler to write what would become the Carpenters’ “Merry Christmas Darling” (1970).

Richard Carpenter was one of Pooler’s students. He set to music the lyrics that Pooler had written for a lost love over two decades ago. “Morphine’s Sexy Christmas Baby Mine” (1993) mirrors the Carpenters’ song in its epistolary format and opening allusion to Christmas cards, but is far darker.

Blues singer Charles Brown captures the loneliness of the season in Please Come Home for Christmas (1960) – a possible allusion to the pastiche Oh! the Beatles from the 1950s. Darling (1969) – and in the obscure My Most Miserable Christmas (1961) and Christmas Finds Me Oh So Sad (1961).

Inspired by a real man he knew named Frankie Bierton who was disabled due to spinal meningitis, Willie Nelson’s Pretty Paper (1963) brings the loneliness of home to the streets. The ballad, first recorded by Roy Orbison, contrasts a forlorn vendor selling wrapping paper with the laughter of “downtown shoppers.” The following year, Nelson released another ballad, What A Merry Christmas This Could Be – a regretful reminiscence of a failed relationship.

Aimee Mann’s 2006 songs “Christmastime” and “Calling on Mary” capture the same feeling of spending the holidays alone without completely missing out on a Christmas miracle. Meanwhile, Nellie McKay kept the wistfulness alive with the equal parts sad and satirical A Christmas Dirge (2007), an environmentally conscious, mellifluous hymn to kindness. It concludes with a chirpy and rather unsettling “Merry Christmas everyone!”

Perhaps one of the most heartbreaking Christmas songs is Jimmy Webb’s Whatever Happened to Christmas (1968). Through Frank Sinatra’s poignant singing, it tells of loss and the empty seats at the table (“Whatever done to the faces all aglow”).

Goth metal quartet Type O Negative returns to this feeling in Red Water (Christmas Mourning) (1996). Remembering, even when painful or bittersweet, can evoke feelings of empathy and connection and help keep past joys alive.

If the white Christmases of yore, the mistletoe kisses or the 12-day capitalist shopping spree don’t resonate with you, the melancholy songs that escape from the cafe or department store on the high street might. Perhaps those who find it difficult during the “season to be merry” will benefit from indulging in a little doom and gloom.

This article originally appeared in The conversation on December 11, 2024.

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