What was the first Christmas number one?
As a music writer, it’s often my job to be dismissive about things people love. I won’t lie—it’s almost always worth providing a counterargument to commonly held wisdom. Fun, too! However, I can’t quite bring myself to be dismissive about the Christmas number one. No matter how much godawful tripe gets slopped out on the radio the moment Halloween is over and every straw Guy Fawkes has turned to ash, I just can’t bring myself to truly hate it. And yes, before you ask, I have worked retail during the Christmas season. I’ve got a problem.
Maybe it’s because the list of Christmas number ones holds up a lot more than you’d think. Putting aside the seasonal classics like ‘Merry Xmas Everyone’ and ‘Merry Christmas Everybody’ (two statements that should be identical and yet couldn’t be more different), a surprising number of unquestionable brilliance made the top stop for the day of our lord.
‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was Christmas number one twice. The Beatles had four, with ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’, ‘I Feel Fine’ and ‘Day Tripper’ hitting number one consecutively. ‘Sound of the Underground’, ‘2 Become 1’, ‘Killing in the Name’, ‘Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)’, all undeniable. Even the great injustice of the Christmas number one list, the fact that ‘Fairytale of New York’ isn’t on it, is softened slightly by the fact it was only pipped to the post by the Pet Shop Boys’ ‘Always On My Mind’.
Sure, for every ‘Don’t You Want Me’, there are five Mr Blobby’s. For that reason, I could never, in good conscience, argue with someone who calls me a soft touch. However, I will die on the hill that the Christmas number one acts as a national Rosetta stone.
So, what was the first Christmas number one?
Going all the way back to the fact that the first Christmas number one is also the very first UK number one single, Al Martino’s ‘Here In My Heart’, which was dubbed the country’s top-selling single by no less an authority than the NME in its very first year of publication, 1952.
Reflecting just how much of a shoestring project this was, the chart was compiled by writer Percy Dickins personally calling the 20 most popular record shops in the UK and asking for their highest-selling singles that week. The subsequent list became arguably the biggest selling point of the paper, being used as the official UK singles chart until Record Retailer began publishing in 1960.
From then on, the Christmas number one list handily charts the national taste in its development. From the highs of The Beatles and Girls Aloud to lows so depressing they go far beyond questions of taste and into basic morality. Check out who was Christmas number one in 1969 for proof.
Today, five Ladbaby number ones in a row should be a damning indictment of the practice, but I still can’t quite quit it. After all, bad times only serve to make the good times feel better, and the track that ended their yuletide supremacy proves it. In 2023, after 39 years of waiting, the number one single on the UK Charts on Christmas day was finally ‘Last Christmas’. Joy to the world.
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