It’s unlikely that Irving Berlin was pondering the energy price cap when he composed the seasonal standard ‘I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm’ in 1937. ‘I can’t remember a worse December, just watch those icicles form,’ he wrote, a sentiment many of us can surely relate to right now – but wait! ‘What do I care if icicles form,’ he continues. ‘I’ve got my love to keep me warm.’ Good for you, sir. Meanwhile, the rest of us are watching the digits ticking incessantly upward on our smart meter with the murderous fascination of a gun dog fixated on a fox hole. For the first time in my life, I’m actually hoping to get socks from Santa – and perhaps one of those natty woollen jumpers Shakin’ Stevens wore in the video for ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’.

Fortunately, no genre of music brings on a Ready Brek glow quite like Christmas music. Its magical orange forcefield will come in handy during a winter when turning on the central heating has become an act of financial Russian roulette. The cost of burning real fuel isn’t much better, which is terrifically bad news for the Christmas song, which essentially owes its very existence to its proximity to a roaring open fire.

The male protagonist in ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ – now the problematic pariah of seasonal songs by dint of the fella coming on like a predator patrolling a panic room – no longer has much of an argument on which to press his dubious case. ‘Listen to the fireplace roar,’ he murmurs. Really? Have you seen the fine for breaking the rules in a Smoke Control Area, not to mention the price of a tonne of house coal? It might be cold outside, Deano, but it’s positively freezing in here.

‘The Christmas Song’, immortalised by Nat ‘King’ Cole, tells of ‘chestnuts roasting on an open fire’ but counters with ‘Jack Frost nipping at your nose’, so at least half of it is relatable.

Other Christmas songs are so incessantly cheery they have taken on a mocking tone in the current climate. ‘Winter Wonderland’, already one of the least appealing examples of the form, depicts a pair of glassy-eyed lovers swishing smugly around town, trespassing into a field to converse with a snowman masquerading as a man of the cloth. In short, it’s complete madness. And it gets worse. ‘Later on, we’ll conspire/ As we dream by the fire/ To face unafraid/ The plans that we’ve made.’ Not this year, folks. Read the room. Facing the future unafraid is very much not the prevailing mood.

The most cost-efficient option for Christmas 2022 is to snuggle up to songs that emit a genuine in-built warmth. Paul McCartney’s squelchy ‘Wonderful Christmastime’ is bright and simple and breezily upbeat without being sickeningly so. When I saw McCartney play Glasgow in December 2018, he brought on the Paisley Grammar School choir to sing the ‘ding-dong’ part of the song, which was a classic Macca move but still rather lovely. If Bing Crosby singing ‘White Christmas’ has the same effect as a water bottle wrapped in a towel and placed on the midriff, then Otis Redding’s super-charged version is akin to being locked in a sauna for five minutes. Joni Mitchell’s ‘River’ is a mug of mulled wine; The Pogues’ ‘Fairytale of New York’ a mildly perilous treble shot of over-proof spirits.

The song that comes closest to capturing the mood of the times, of course, is ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’. It is the most heart-rending of all classic Christmas tunes, precisely because it leans into the bleak midwinter to acknowledge that this season is all about hope, acceptance and pragmatism during times of uncertainty and estrangement. (Merle Haggard’s unsparing tale of seasonal hardship, ‘If We Make It Through December’, with its tale of a downtrodden Daddy who ‘can’t afford no Christmas cheer’, is perhaps overly tough medicine for all but the most hardy souls.)

‘Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas’ was written in 1943 for Judy Garland to sing in Meet Me in St. Louis. It resonated powerfully with US soldiers during the second world war, when millions of families were unable to commune in person. Frank Sinatra’s 1957 version is the definitively bittersweet reading. ‘Next year all our troubles will be out of sight,’ he sings. Maybe. Hopefully. Probably not. For now, we’ll just have to muddle through somehow. And wear an extra layer.

The post Christmas songs that will reduce your gas bills appeared first on The Spectator.