'Wonderful Christmastime' Is The Only Christmas Song We Need Right Now

How a lot of weed, synthesizers and getting arrested in Japan led to the best Christmas song of all time (or at least the one best suited for right now)

On January 16, 1980, Paul McCartney arrived in Tokyo to play a string of sold out shows with Wings. It was a long time coming, as he couldn’t get a visa to play in Japan, after multiple arrests related to marijuana possession. The Japanese audience would finally see Paul McCartney perform for the first time since he was there with the Beatles in 1966.

Immediately after arriving, he was arrested with about 8 ounces of weed. He spent nine days in jail, and had to cancel the tour and go back home.

In all of the mythology of the Beatles and their related projects, there are a lot of what-ifs. What if John were still alive today? What if they could all get along and keep making music together?

The “what if” here is, What if Paul never got arrested, and played those shows with Wings as planned? Would we have still gotten the best Christmas song ever written?

Probably not.

I am talking, of course, about “Wonderful Christmastime.”

Back up a year before Macca’s arrest in Tokyo. McCartney was spending a lot of time fooling around with synthesizers and smoking weed at his farm in Scotland. He was sampling cartoon dialogue over trippy synth lines, handling all of the instrumentals on his own, getting in on the 80s action with drum machines and programming, all from the solitude of home—essentially way ahead of his time when it comes to making a bedroom pop album.

This era of his songwriting was just something he was doing while he waited to see what happened next with Wings. Plan A was new music and touring all over the world. After the arrest in Japan, that wasn’t happening as planned, so he put Wings on the backburner for a while and went with plan B—the material he made on his own that, for him, was pretty unconventional. Most of this stuff he had written on his own ended up as McCartney II, which includes my favorite McCartney song, “Temporary Secretary.”

I’ve converted a few of my friends into liking this song. It’s so … frustrating and strange that it’s hard to take seriously at first. But then you realize it stays with you, and you realize it’s in your head. Then you wake up the next day and think, I’m gonna listen to “Temporary Secretary.” So you do.

And it’s for largely the same reasons that I love “Temporary Secretary” that I love “Wonderful Christmastime.” And as much as I’d love to devote this whole blog into a plea for you all to hold “Temporary Secretary” to the esteem to which I hold it, it’s December. So, it’s time to write about Christmas music.

“Wonderful Christmastime” is, as it says in the song, simple. It’s built around those first two zappy notes that are instantly recognizable still 30 years later. There’s this endearing abrasiveness to it that you sort of have to get past or get used to, much like there is on all of McCartney II. For that reason, none of the cover versions will ever be as good as the original. They don’t have that weirdness. That punch. That, *puts on music writer hat* angular instrumentation. It’s hard to make futuristic beep boops Christmasy, a season whose aesthetic depends on its quaintness. But if anyone can do it…

And looking at this song 30 years later, in this particular moment in time in 2020 where I’m personally coming off of a Thanksgiving not around family for the first time in my life, there’s another side of “Wonderful Christmastime” that feels especially poignant.

There’s no grand illusion of giant parties, sweeping snowy landscapes or expensive displays.

The mood is right

The spirits up

We're here tonight

And that's enough

Simply having a wonderful Christmastime

This year, most of us are not going to see our families. We’re not going to be able to go to big Christmas parties like usual. But, it doesn’t have to be entirely miserable.

These two literal geniuses adding lyrical annotations on Genius get it.

There’s not one mention of religion. There’s no mention of buying anything. There’s no mention of falling in love. If you’re at a party, it works for that. But if you’re sitting at home by a tree (or without a tree), it works for that, too.

It’s just a song written by a guy who was smoking a ton of weed and wasn’t allowed to go to Japan, and who was simply having a wonderful Christmastime. 

All of the songs telling us what Christmas is supposed to be, supposed to feel like, are just like all of the posts on Instagram that make us think our lives and bodies should look a certain way. We feel shitty by comparison. The moral of “Wonderful Christmastime” is that being you, right now, however you’re spending your holiday, is great and correct and just as Christmas as anyone else and their decked halls.

The Christmas in “Wonderful Christmastime” has no stakes. No stress.

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Like McCartney II, people weren’t quite sure what to make of it, or they just outright didn’t like it.

But, in true McCartney fashion, he made a shit load of money from it. The guy who famously wrote “swimming pools”—he and John Lennon used this phrase to say, “let’s write a song that makes us a killing”—isn’t going to write a song that doesn’t make money, even if it is something he whipped up at home about a simple holiday season. Ten years ago, Forbes estimated that with all of the uses and covers of “Wonderful Christmastime,” Sir Paul makes $400,000 annually from this song. At that time, he had made about $15 million from it. That was ten years ago, so by now he’s gotta be close to $20 million.

From “Wonderful Christmastime.”

Its strangeness is what makes it so great. It stands out from every other Christmas song on the market or at Macy’s. Knowing the story behind it—the most famous musician in the world barred from Japan because he had too much weed on him after barely being allowed in because he got busted with weed too many times and couldn’t tour with his mega famous band—just makes it better.

I like Christmas music as much as the next guy. And I am here to say that “Wonderful Christmastime” is the best Christmas song. It’s easy to say that I’m being a contrarian, picking a song that so many would find annoying. Maybe it’s the bias of how well it relates to this moment in time for me and so many others in the US. But I’d argue that at a time where Christmas starts the second Halloween winds down, with snowy commercials for Hondas and Target interrupting your life, a song about enjoying the simple pleasures of the season seems like the most genuine holiday tune there is.

And, this year in particular, a song about basically just *~ViBiNg~* through the holidays without the big gatherings a lot of people are used to or the pressure to have the Best Christmas Ever, is pretty nice.

Am I also here to say that “Temporary Secretary” is better than every Beatles song ever, and should have been included in that shitty movie where the world forgot the Beatles existed except one guy, and he would’ve tanked his career entirely by “writing” “Temporary Secretary” and confusing everyone, but is lauded as a genius decades later? Yes, I am. It would have been a massive improvement.

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Today’s Snakes and Sparklers musical guest is Bill Callahan, Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Bill MacKay doing the best Steely Dan song.