The Story Behind The Song: Brenda Lee’s ‘Rockin Around The Christmas Tree’
Every year, a select handful of Christmas songs storm up the charts to battle it out for holiday supremacy. Most often, the winner is inevitably Mariah Carey, whose world-conquering ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ has reached number one in the US for three consecutive years. But there are other fighters as well: Burl Ives’ ‘Holly Jolly Christmas’, Wham!’s ‘Last Christmas’ and Andy Williams’ ‘It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year’ all consistently rise to the top. But only one song gives Carey a run for her money – Brenda Lee’s ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’.
Most holiday songs fit into one of two categories. It’s either a consciously modern spin (‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’, ‘Last Christmas’), or it’s so old school that it might as well have been recorded in the 1930s (‘Holly Jolly Christmas’, ‘It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year’). ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’ exists outside those parameters. Clearly, a product of the 1950s, Lee’s ode to yuletide cheer doesn’t have any of the schmaltz or frumpiness that usually follows the songs of that era.
Oddly enough, ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’ originated with the master of old-school frumpiness, songwriter Johnny Marks. If you’ve loved a classic Christmas song some time in your life, there’s a good chance that Marks was the one who wrote it. ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’, ‘I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day’, and the aforementioned ‘Holly Jolly Christmas’ all came from Marks’ mind.
So when he adopted the rock medium for his next Christmas song, Marks wanted a unique voice to carry the track. In fact, he had a very specific voice in mind. That was Brenda Lee, the teenage singer known to the world as “Little Miss Dynamite” for her short stature and fiery vocal abilities. Lee wasn’t even in high school when Marks approached her to sing his new song.
“I was only 12, and I had not had a lot of success in records,” Lee told The Tennessean in 2015, “But for some reason, he heard me and wanted me to do it. And I did.”
Lee’s biggest hits, including ‘Sweet Nothin’s’, ‘Break It To Me Gently’, and ‘I’m Sorry’, wouldn’t be recorded until later on in her career. In 1958, she was mostly known as a country music child star. But it didn’t take much for Lee to adjust to the yuletide pull of ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’. She had recorded holiday songs before, including ‘I’m Gonna Lasso Santa Claus’ and ‘Christy Christmas’, but those tracks were straight novelty. ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’ was probably meant to be the same, capitalizing on the fact that rock music was still seen as a fad in 1958.
In fact, when ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’ first came out, it wasn’t even able to capitalise on the craze. Decca Records released the song in November of 1958 and again in 1959, but it didn’t chart either time. It was only after Lee hit number one with ‘I’m Sorry’ that ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’ made its first chart appearance, topping out at number 14 in 1960. “It was magic, and I think we all knew it,” Lee said. “It took a few years to take off, but once it did, it really did.”
As pop culture continued to evolve, most Christmas songs of the 1950s fell by the wayside. Not ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’. Marks included an instrumental version in his 1964 television special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, but when Lee’s original recording was featured in the 1990 movie Home Alone, the song saw a major resurgence of popularity. Every year, Lee’s ode to carolling in “the new old-fashioned way” got frequent spins on holiday radio.
Then, something strange happened. In 2014, six full decades after the original song’s release, ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’ reappeared on the Billboard Hot 100. Over the next three years, it kept climbing through the top 50 in December, and in 2018, the song went top ten for the first time. Starting around this time, Billboard changed its collection metrics to better reflect streaming in ranking popular songs. Once the internet took hold, ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’ became one of the premiere Christmas songs.
From 2019 to 2021, ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’ has landed at number two on the Billboard Hot 100, each time being kept from the top spot by ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’. As of the writing of this article, it currently sits at number three, but just give it time. Once Christmas is in full swing, ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’ will once again threaten to reach number one.
“It’s extended my career,” the now 78-year-old Lee says about her most famous song. “You get to a certain age in this industry and you’re not as hot as you once were. It’s meant to be that way…that’s why there are numbers under one. We can’t always be No. 1. I think when you have that mindset, you’re just thankful that you’re a part of something you love to do.”
