Brett Banter

What is the most underrated Christmas song of all time? Well, it obviously has to come from the most underrated band of all time, The Kinks, who recorded “Father Christmas.”

What a great song. The fun little ringing Christmas bells in the beginning segues brilliantly into Dave Davies’s blasting opening guitar riff. Listen to that a few times. How many Christmas songs rock like that? Very few. This ain’t the frigging Eagles here.

In true Kinks fashion, the seemingly simple lyrics are brilliant. What sounds like a little raucous song about wanting money for Christmas over toys, hides a greater depth. The bridge where the gang of kids explain what they really want is a job for their unemployed father who “has lots of mouths to feed.” Deep down, the narrator (Ray Davies)is telling a story. Don’t judge someone so quickly. Their actions may tell something different than you expected. And the last lyric about remembering the “kids who’ve got nothing” is more socially conscious then anything John Lennon ever pretended to be.