We all have our favourite Christ­mas songs. Most of these we like through sheer tra­di­tion – songs like Slade’s Mer­ry Christ­mas Every­body (1973) or Paul McCartney’s Won­der­ful Christ­mas­time (1979) are just as part of the Christ­mas land­scape, ingrained by sheer rep­e­ti­tion, as Christ­mas trees and Father Christ­mas. I have delved into Spo­ti­fy to explore Christ­mas songs from way back, many of which you no longer hear on the radio but which nonethe­less are often very enjoy­able – check out Kay Starr’s (Everybody’s Wait­in’ for) The Man with the Bag (1950) or Mitch Miller’s Must Be San­ta (1960) to name just two wor­thy old clas­sics (I’m also a fan of Bob Dylan’s cov­er of the lat­ter).

How­ev­er, the Christ­mas song that res­onates the most with me remains Greg Lake’s glo­ri­ous debut solo sin­gle in 1975, I Believe in Father Christ­mas. It man­ages to encap­su­late the required Christ­mas mag­ic whilst remain­ing a great piece of music in its own right. Greg Lake wrote the song ini­tial­ly with a view to protest­ing at the com­mer­cial­isaton of Christ­mas, but the lyrics pro­vid­ed by King Crim­son co-founder Pete Sin­field brought it back on track as a pic­ture-post­card Christ­mas song (albeit with a theme of lost inno­cence as the nar­ra­tor “saw through the dis­guise” and seems a bit dis­grun­tled about bro­ken promis­es regard­ing snow and peace on Earth, but nev­er mind).

The instru­men­tal melody between the vers­es comes from the “Troi­ka” por­tion of Sergei Prokofiev’s Lieu­tenant Kijé Suite, writ­ten for the 1934 Sovi­et film of the same name, and pro­vides a very Christ­massy, sleigh­bell-heavy motif. This was added at the sug­ges­tion of Greg’s band­mate from ELP, Kei­th Emer­son, who was no stranger to incor­po­rat­ing themes and motifs from clas­si­cal music. An orches­tra and choir were added too, con­tribut­ing to an ebul­lient musi­cal finale. The song was record­ed at Abbey Road stu­dios, and the video was shot on the Sinai Penin­su­la of Egypt, and in the West Bank.

The song was released in Novem­ber 1975 and got to num­ber two in the UK sin­gles chart, held off the num­ber one slot by a cer­tain Bohemi­an Rhap­sody by Queen. Lake com­ment­ed: “I got beat­en by one of the great­est records ever made. I would’ve been pissed off if I’d been beat­en by Cliff (Richard).”

Mer­ry Christ­mas!