I think we can all agree that one of the best things about Christmas every year is the Christmas music. You’ll say you’re sick of it by about the 22nd December, but we don’t believe you.
Howling out Fairytale of New York while you’re stuck in traffic, or screeching the All I Want for Christmas is You right in the face of your similarly single best friend definitely makes the season brighter, but some Christmas songs fly under the radar and get nowhere near the credit they deserve.
The biggest victim of this is, the quite frankly brilliant, “A Spaceman Came Travelling” by Chris De Burgh.
De Burgh should be heralded as an Irish hero, not only did he produce our first ever (and to date only) Miss World in Rosanna Davison, but he also wrote the greatest Christmas song of all time. That’s right, A Spaceman Came Travelling is not just an underrated Christmas song, it’s low-key the best Christmas song of all time.
My love for the song started back in secondary school. In De La Salle College in Waterford, we had a very expansive music department complete with choir and a full band.
Every Christmas we got a free lesson to go to the annual Christmas mass and concert. This was the highlight of our scholastic Christmas season and not just because of the free class, but because of A Spaceman Came Travelling. Even the guy who sang it every year, a relatively unknown or cared for student, became the most popular man in the school before and during that performance every year. Afterwards nobody cared, naturally. But, still!
A Spaceman Came Travelling has everything.
For the traditionalists, it’s basically about Jesus. I mean, they sing it at mass!
And for the non traditionalists, it’s just a brilliant song to sing along to. You don’t even have to know the verses, I adore this song and I don’t even know half the words to the verses. But when that chorus kicks in, we all join in to the “la, la, la ,la…” bit. Genius song writing.
Chris De Burgh, I salute you.
