The Christmas Song

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• Top 8 Christmas Songs of All Time

  Currently #4 · score 0

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• White Christmas

  "White Christmas," written by Irving Berlin and first performed publicly by Bing Crosby on Christmas Day 1941, became the best-selling single of all time by some measures, a distinction it has held for over eight decades despite the enormous growth of the recorded music industry since its release. Berlin reportedly wrote the song's wistful, nostalgic lyrics while staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles, composing an ode to a snowy Christmas from the middle of a Southern California winter, a contrast later commentators have often noted as part of the song's enduring emotional appeal. Crosby's version, featured in the films "Holiday Inn" and later "White Christmas," became so closely associated with the song that Berlin himself reportedly considered Crosby's recording the definitive version, and it has been re-released and charted repeatedly during the Christmas season for decades since. Its combination of its record-setting sales status and Bing Crosby's definitive vocal performance has made "White Christmas" widely regarded as the greatest and most commercially significant Christmas song ever written.

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• Jingle Bells

  "Jingle Bells," written by James Lord Pierpont and originally published in 1857 under the title "One Horse Open Sleigh," is one of the oldest and most widely recognized Christmas songs in the American canon, despite lyrics that make no direct reference to Christmas itself. The song was reportedly composed while Pierpont lived in Medford, Massachusetts, and the town has long claimed the song's birthplace distinction with a commemorative plaque, though Savannah, Georgia, where Pierpont later resided and where the song was formally copyrighted, has also claimed the association. Its simple, highly singable melody and lack of explicitly religious content made it one of the most universally adopted secular Christmas songs, sung in classrooms, at office parties, and across religious traditions in a way more overtly devotional carols could not achieve. Its combination of its status as one of the oldest songs in the modern Christmas canon and its uniquely secular, universally singable appeal has made "Jingle Bells" one of the most performed and recognized Christmas songs ever written.

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• All I Want for Christmas Is You

  "All I Want for Christmas Is You," written and recorded by Mariah Carey with co-writer Walter Afanasieff and released in 1994, became the most successful and commercially significant Christmas song of the modern pop era, eventually reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in December 2019, 25 years after its original release. Recorded at Right Track Recording studio in New York City, the song combined Carey's vocal range with a deliberately vintage, 1960s girl-group-inspired production style, giving it a nostalgic sonic quality despite being written and recorded decades after that era's peak. The song's enormous and continuing annual streaming and sales resurgence every holiday season, decades after its release, has made it one of the most consistently lucrative recordings in modern music, generating an estimated multi-million-dollar royalty windfall for Carey and her co-writer every year. Its combination of its unprecedented modern commercial success and its status as the definitive contemporary pop Christmas song has made "All I Want for Christmas Is You" the most significant Christmas song written in the last half-century.

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• Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree

  "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," written by Johnny Marks and recorded by 13-year-old Brenda Lee in 1958, became one of the first Christmas songs to successfully incorporate rock and roll's emerging rhythm and energy into the traditionally more sedate genre of holiday music. Marks, who had already written "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and would go on to become one of the most prolific Christmas songwriters of the 20th century, built his publishing career substantially around holiday material, an unusually specialized commercial niche within the broader music industry. The song's initial commercial performance upon release was relatively modest, and its status as a genuine holiday standard grew gradually over subsequent decades of radio replay, eventually becoming one of the most streamed Christmas songs of the digital era despite its more than 60-year-old original recording. Its combination of its pioneering rock-and-roll-infused sound and its eventual long-delayed rise to genuine standard status has made "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" one of the most distinctive and enduring Christmas songs of the mid-20th century.

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• Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

  "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane for the 1944 MGM musical film "Meet Me in St. Louis," introduced a more bittersweet, melancholy emotional register into the Christmas song canon, reflecting the film's wartime-era themes of family separation and uncertainty. Judy Garland, who performed the song in the film, reportedly requested that Martin soften the song's originally even bleaker draft lyrics, resulting in the more hopeful, though still wistful, version that became the standard recorded by countless subsequent artists. Frank Sinatra's later 1957 re-recording, for which he specifically requested Martin revise a lyric he felt was too melancholy for his own album, produced the somewhat more upbeat alternate version of certain lines that many contemporary performers now use interchangeably with Garland's original. Its combination of its distinctively bittersweet emotional tone and its dual iconic Garland and Sinatra recordings has made "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" one of the most emotionally complex and enduringly reinterpreted songs in the Christmas canon.

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• Lindt Gold Bunny

  The Lindt Gold Bunny, a hollow milk chocolate rabbit wrapped in distinctive gold foil with a small red ribbon and bell around its neck, was introduced by the Swiss chocolatier Lindt & Sprüngli in 1952 and became one of the most recognized premium chocolate Easter products in the world. The bunny's consistent gold foil design and small neck bell became instantly recognizable branding that Lindt has maintained essentially unchanged for over seven decades, giving it an unusually stable visual identity compared to most seasonal candy packaging, which is redesigned more frequently. Lindt's positioning of the Gold Bunny as a premium, gift-worthy chocolate item, priced above typical mass-market Easter chocolate, reflected the broader Lindt brand's identity as a higher-end Swiss chocolate maker extending its premium positioning into the seasonal Easter candy category specifically. The Lindt Gold Bunny's combination of its seven-decade unchanged iconic gold foil design and its premium positioning within Easter chocolate has made it one of the most recognizable seasonal chocolate products in the world.

• Jelly Belly Jelly Beans

  Jelly Belly was founded by the Herman Goelitz Candy Company, which introduced its distinctively true-to-life, intensely flavored gourmet jelly bean line in 1976, building a reputation around flavor accuracy that distinguished it from simpler, less flavor-varied jelly bean competitors. The company gained significant national visibility after President Ronald Reagan, a devoted fan, kept jars of Jelly Belly beans in the Oval Office and reportedly requested the company create a specific blueberry flavor in time for his 1981 inauguration, a well-documented piece of candy and political history. Jelly Belly's extensive flavor lineup, eventually including deliberately unusual and off-putting "Bean Boozled" flavors like actual dirt or vomit alongside its standard fruit and dessert flavors, reflected the brand's willingness to lean into novelty and shock value alongside its core gourmet flavor accuracy. Jelly Belly's combination of its Reagan-era White House association and its extensive, flavor-accurate product lineup has made it one of the most recognizable jelly bean brands associated with Easter baskets nationwide.

• Robin Eggs (Whoppers)

  Robin Eggs, a malted-milk candy produced by the Whoppers brand, coat the same malted milk ball center found in the standard year-round Whoppers product in a speckled, egg-like colored candy shell specifically designed to resemble small robin's eggs for the Easter season. The candy's speckled pastel coloring and small egg shape made it a popular choice specifically for filling Easter baskets and hiding during Easter egg hunts, giving it a distinct seasonal role separate from its parent Whoppers brand's typical year-round movie-theater-candy positioning. Robin Eggs occupy a specific niche among malted milk candy enthusiasts as a genuinely seasonal variant of a product otherwise available year-round, with some fans specifically preferring the candy shell texture of the Easter version over the standard chocolate coating of regular Whoppers. Robin Eggs's combination of its distinctive speckled egg-shaped design and its specific role as an Easter-basket and egg-hunt candy has made it one of the more visually distinctive candies associated with the holiday.

• Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs

  Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs apply the same chocolate-and-peanut-butter combination that made the original Reese's Peanut Butter Cup a bestseller, reshaped into a seasonal egg format specifically for Easter, and they have developed a passionate fan following that frequently argues the egg shape holds a superior peanut-butter-to-chocolate ratio than the standard cup. The product's seasonal-only availability window around Easter, similar to the strategy behind other holiday-specific candy shapes Reese's produces for Halloween and Christmas, helped drive concentrated seasonal sales spikes and sustained anticipation among devoted fans each year. Online debates over whether the egg, cup, tree, or pumpkin format of Reese's peanut butter candy is objectively superior became a recurring, genuinely popular piece of seasonal candy culture, with the Easter egg shape frequently cited by its defenders as having the best filling distribution of any shape the company produces. Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs's combination of its beloved core chocolate-peanut-butter recipe and its passionately debated shape-based fan culture has made it one of the most popular Easter candies in the country.

• Peeps

  Peeps, the marshmallow chick and bunny candy, were first produced by hand by the Rodda Candy Company in the 1920s before the Just Born candy company acquired the brand in 1953 and mechanized production, reducing what once took 27 hours per batch to just six minutes. The candy's bright, uniform coloring and simple marshmallow-and-sugar-crystal format made it an inexpensive, mass-producible Easter basket staple, and its shelf-stable nature contributed to its reputation, often made in jest, for having an unusually long, almost indestructible shelf life. Peeps became a genuine internet and pop culture phenomenon well beyond ordinary candy consumption, spawning "Peeps dioramas" contests at newspapers and museums, viral microwave-experiment videos, and a devoted fan subculture engaging with the candy as a creative medium rather than purely a snack. Peeps's combination of its mechanized mass-production origin story and its surprising second life as an internet and pop-culture phenomenon has made it one of the most culturally distinctive candies associated with Easter.