23# Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree 🎶

Here’s the surprising history behind your favorite Christmas Carols!
What if “The Red-Nosed Reindeer”, Frosty and the “One Horse Open Sleigh” had nothing to do with Christmas?
Singing Christmas songs goes hand in hand with baking Christmas treats, listening our favorite Christmas tales, watching our favorite Christmas movies, and not only.
Like everything around this period of the year, everything has a story.
From songs that have been saved from being erased forever to not really knowing for sure where a song came from, here is the history of a few Christmas Carols you know and sing still today!

Enjoy our Advent Calendar 2022!

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🎄🎅🏻 THERE ARE ONLY 2 DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS 🎅🏻🎄

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For some, the holiday season doesn’t start until Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” makes its annual return to radio.

Born Brenda Mae Tarpley in Georgia in 1944, Brenda made her debut on the “Ozark Jubilee” at the age of nine and, at 12, she cut her first record.
Nicknamed “Little Miss Dynamite” after releasing a single called “Dynamite” in 1957, she found success in both pop and country music. Songs like “I’m Sorry,” “All Alone Am I” and “Break It to Me Gently” made her one of the most popular artists of the 1960s at home and abroad.
She has even performed for Queen Elizabeth II and received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

“Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” was written by Johnny Marks, a Jewish songwriter who also penned “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “A Holly Jolly Christmas.”
According to Brenda, who struck up a lifelong friendship with him, after he wrote the song he told a publisher friend, “I want Brenda Lee to do this song.”
Looking back, Brenda isn’t quite sure what led him to seek her out, as she was only 12, and she had not had a lot of success in records, but for some reason he heard her and wanted her to do it. And she did it.
Although they weren’t recording the song during the holidays, Brenda’s producer, Owen Bradley, was determined to get his young artist in the Christmas spirit, with the lights way down low, and a Christmas tree and Christmas lights.
Brenda recorded the song with members of Nashville’s A-Team, the legendary collective of session musicians that included Hank Garland and Grady Martin on guitar, Boots Randolph playing swinging saxophone, and the Anita Kerr Singers contributing backing vocals.

When the song was released as a single in 1958, however, it was largely unsuccessful.
It wasn’t until after Lee’s 1960 mega-hit, “I’m Sorry,” that “ Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”, which had been re-released, started to become popular, cracking the Top 20 on the pop charts that year, and continuing to perform well during subsequent holiday seasons.
In 1990, the hit movie “Home Alone” featured “ Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” in its entirety, exposing the song to a new generation of listeners, many of whom weren’t even born when Lee charted her last non-holiday Top 10 a decade earlier.
The movie breathed new life into it, and It has just been a blessing for one of people’s favorite holiday hit.

And today, even though “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” has lyrics rather dated, but that hasn’t dulled the appeal of the song.
It takes place at the “Christmas party hop,” a festive “sock hop” where teenagers would take off their shoes and dance, popular in the ’50s.
The song also evokes quaint traditions like caroling and mistletoe, but it all comes off in a good old-fashioned way.
Over the years, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” has been recorded by countless artists and is recognized worldwide. Recently, a friend sent Brenda Lee a video of schoolchildren in China dancing to the song.
And she performs “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” at all of her concerts, no matter the season, and says she’s probably sung it “thousands and thousands” of times. And the audience loves it even when it’s the middle of August!