How many Christmas songs?

A couple of weeks before the Thanksgiving holiday I was in New York to catch up with US clients and attend a meeting of the Open Music Initiative. Still coming to terms with the transition from summer to autumn (snow in Nashville should have been a clue), I nearly jumped out of my skin when, as I walked past the open doors of a high street emporium, I heard festive bells and doo-wops coming out of the speakers.

Now that we are into December, the season for Christmas music is well and truly upon us. Depending on your disposition towards Christmas songs, this might either get you skipping with festive cheer or stuffing your earphones into your ears. But whatever your reaction, there’s no avoiding Christmas music at this time of year.

The speaker-to-speaker coverage of Christmas tunes has got me thinking. Just how many Christmas songs are there? We’re all familiar with the staples — Jingle BellsWhite ChristmasRocking Around The Christmas Tree — but Christmas music is a whole genre of its own. I conducted some research to find out.

Blokur holds information for many millions of songs written by more than half a million individual songwriters, so I ran a quick search for songs with “Christmas” in the title. I thought I would find a couple of hundred. The actual number? 9,274. Yep, almost ten thousand songs just on the subject of Christmas.

how many xmas songs

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Remember, it doesn’t include seasonal tunes with titles like Jingle Bells or Frosty The Snowman. Let alone songs like Stay Another Day or The Power of Love that pass the “Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?” test. It turns out that Christmas music is a whole mini music industry of its own.

To put those 9,274 Christmas songs into context, I dug out the most popular words used in song titles to see where Christmas ranks in the hall-of-fame of common song lyrics like “love” and “baby”.

Top twenty most popular words used in song titles

Top twenty most popular words used in song titles

Of all the songs on the Blokur platform, “Love” is by far the most popular word used in a song title. That’s no surprise. Whole Lotta LoveHow Deep Is Your LoveBaby Love…the list goes on and on. And compared to other top pop keywords like “Day”, “Time” and “Night”, Christmas can’t compete. But it does come in at number 18 in the top twenty chart of song title themes. Not bad for a type of music that only gets played one, or two…or three months a year.

We’ve established that Christmas music is a thriving industry of its own. But who are the Queens and Kings of the Christmas song? Who exactly is writing all of these songs? To find out, I ran a search on Blokur for songwriters who have written at least one song with “Christmas, “Santa Claus” or “Happy Holidays” in the title.

It turns out that this micro music industry has specialists at work. Six writers have reached the landmark of 50 Christmas songs, and the top five have between them contributed a whopping 400 Christmas songs. But out on his own is Robert D. Sands Jr. The number of Christmas songs he has written? 118. That is some commitment to the Christmas cause.

Top ten writers of Christmas songs

Top ten writers of Christmas songs


After all that Christmas music talk, perhaps it is appropriate to end with a song. A Christmas one of course. There are more than enough flavours of Christmas song to go around, but since I am still resisting the bells and doo-wops, here is something a bit less tinselly: Tavener’s The Lamb performed by the choir of King’s College, Cambridge. As the dissonance turns into glorious harmony, you can close your eyes and convince yourself that Christmas Eve is still weeks away.

The Lamb by John Tavener, performed by the choir of King’s College Cambridge