December Music Playlists: Great Music For The Festive Season

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Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, winter solstice, New Year’s Eve, and the music that holds all of it.

December is the most musically loaded month of the year. There is more collective listening, more shared musical experience, and more emotional weight attached to music in December than in any other month. It’s also the month where music is most likely to be taken for granted, reduced to background noise in shopping centres and office parties. So here’s my attempt to think about December playlists properly. All of it. The sacred and the silly, the global and the personal, the end and the beginning.

The Advent and Build-Up Playlist

December 1st is the moment Christmas music becomes acceptable, and I will defend that boundary firmly. The build-up to Christmas has its own distinct musical mood that deserves more attention than it usually gets. It’s different from Christmas Day music. It’s about anticipation rather than arrival. That distinction matters.

The best Advent music has a quality of expectation and mystery. Medieval and Renaissance choral music is extraordinary in this regard. The Tallis Scholars, the Hilliard Ensemble, and the Sixteen are all ensembles that perform this music with extraordinary precision and beauty. Thomas Tallis, the 16th-century English composer, wrote music of such pure architectural beauty that it remains breathtaking. His forty-part motet Spem in Alium is one of the most remarkable pieces of music ever conceived.

For something more accessible, try the great tradition of carol singing. Not the sanitised commercial versions but the rawer, older carols that predate Victorian sentimentality. The Holly and the Ivy, The Coventry Carol, and In the Bleak Midwinter all have a genuine ancient quality. The Choir of King’s College Cambridge broadcasts its annual Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols on Christmas Eve, and it remains one of the most beautiful things in British cultural life.

For contemporary Advent music, try Sufjan Stevens’s Songs for Christmas box set, which mixes traditional carols with original compositions in genuinely inventive ways.

The Christmas Classics Playlist

This one needs to exist, and there’s no point pretending otherwise. Christmas classics are classics for good reasons. They have been tested across decades and generations, and they still work. The task is not to avoid them, but to consider which versions are actually the best.

Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You is simply one of the best-produced pop songs of the last thirty years, and its dominance of December airwaves is completely justified. Bing Crosby’s White Christmas remains the best-selling single of all time for reasons that are obvious from the first note. Wham!’s Last Christmas is perfect pop songwriting.

But also think about the jazz Christmas tradition. Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack is one of the most quietly extraordinary holiday albums ever made. Its gentle piano jazz and understated warmth are a genuine antidote to the more bombastic end of Christmas music. Similarly, Ella Fitzgerald’s Christmas albums have a warmth and intelligence that never dates.

The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl’s Fairytale of New York deserves its status as the greatest Christmas song ever recorded, at least in the UK. It’s genuinely moving, properly funny, and musically sophisticated. Anyone who disagrees is wrong. Rolling Stone’s 25 Greatest Christmas Songs list is worth reading for a broader view of the canon.

The Hanukkah Playlist

Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, moves through the calendar but frequently falls in December. It’s an eight-day celebration that deserves musical recognition beyond the novelty songs that sometimes dominate its cultural representation.

Klezmer music is one of the most distinctive and joyful musical traditions in the world. Originating in Eastern European Jewish communities, it blends instrumental virtuosity with deep emotional expressiveness in a way that is completely distinctive. The clarinet in klezmer does things it doesn’t do anywhere else. Artists like Giora Feidman are masters of this tradition. The Klezmatics are a New York-based band who have been revitalising klezmer since the 1980s with energy and intelligence.

For contemporary Jewish music that connects to Hanukkah themes of light and perseverance, artists like Matisyahu blend reggae and hip hop with Hebrew and Jewish textual traditions in fascinating ways. More recently, the Israeli music scene has produced artists like Noa (Achinoam Nini) who blend Sephardic Jewish traditions with world music in extraordinary ways.

Also worth exploring is the tradition of Sephardic Jewish music, which draws on the musical cultures of Spain, North Africa, and the Middle East. This is a rich and beautiful tradition that many people know nothing about. The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe has excellent resources on Jewish musical traditions.

The Winter Solstice Playlist

Around the 21st of December, the winter solstice arrives. The shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. After this point, days begin to lengthen again, which is genuinely worth celebrating. Humans have marked this moment with music and fire for longer than recorded history.

We covered the summer solstice in June and noted the importance of music with ceremonial, ancient qualities. The winter solstice deserves the same treatment but with a different emotional register. Where the summer solstice is abundant and expansive, the winter solstice is intimate and inward. The music should reflect that.

Arvo Pärt comes back here as the perfect companion. His Tabula Rasa and Fratres are both deeply contemplative works that feel genuinely connected to ancient practice. Similarly, the Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, who died in 2018, made music of extraordinary winter beauty. His The Sun’s Gone Dim is devastating and perfect.

For something rooted in actual solstice tradition, look into the music connected to Yule celebrations in Scandinavian and Germanic pagan traditions. Artists like Heilung, whom we first mentioned in February, create music specifically designed to connect listeners to pre-Christian winter traditions. Their live performances are extraordinary, ritualistic events. The Winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge are free to attend and deeply atmospheric.

The Kwanzaa Playlist

Kwanzaa is celebrated from December 26th to January 1st in African American communities and increasingly in African and African diaspora communities globally. Created in 1966 by Dr Maulana Karenga, it celebrates African heritage, unity, and culture through seven core principles called the Nguzo Saba.

Music is central to Kwanzaa celebrations. The playlist draws on the full breadth of African and African American musical traditions. This is a genuinely joyful and culturally rich occasion that deserves more visibility than it sometimes receives outside African American communities.

Traditional African music is an obvious and important starting point. West African drumming traditions, particularly from Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal, are both ancient and completely alive today. Artists like Youssou N’Dour from Senegal, who has been making extraordinary music for over forty years, and Angelique Kidjo from Benin are both brilliant starting points.

For African American music specifically connected to themes of heritage and pride, try building a playlist that moves from spirituals to jazz, soul, and hip-hop. The through-line of dignity and resilience in Black American music runs from the earliest field recordings to Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly in a way that feels genuinely continuous. The official Kwanzaa website has cultural resources, including musical recommendations.

The Christmas Party Playlist

The office party, the family gathering, the friends’ reunion. December parties are a specific social occasion, and the music carries enormous responsibility. Get it right and the evening lifts. Get it wrong, and no amount of good food and drink fully compensates.

The Christmas party playlist has three phases, and ignoring this structure is a mistake. The early phase needs to be warm and accessible without being too full-on. Classic Motown and soul works perfectly here. It’s familiar enough that nobody feels alienated but interesting enough that the room gradually warms. Then the middle phase can push the energy higher. This is where classic party music earns its place. Earth, Wind, and Fire’s September, which is technically about September but nobody cares in December, is one of the most reliably effective party songs ever recorded.

The late phase should commit fully to dancing. This is where you pull out the disco, the house music, and the pop bangers without apology. Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive. Whitney Houston’s I Wanna Dance with Somebody. Lizzo’s Juice. These are not subtle choices, and that is entirely the point.

For a playlist that navigates all three phases without you having to think about it, Spotify’s Ultimate Christmas Party playlist is actually well-sequenced and reliable. But building your own, with songs that specifically matter to the people in the room, is always more powerful.

The Christmas Day Playlist

Christmas Day itself has distinct musical phases worth considering separately. Morning, with its chaos and excitement, needs something that matches the energy without overwhelming it. Afternoon, with its food and warmth and possibly slightly too much family, needs something that sits in the background without demanding attention. Evening, when things have quieted down, needs something genuinely warm and reflective.

On Christmas morning, the energy of children or the excitement of presents calls for something that evokes genuine joy. Upbeat Christmas classics work perfectly. But also think about the music that has become personally significant to your family or household. The songs that have played on previous Christmas mornings. That kind of musical continuity is one of the things that makes Christmas feel like Christmas.

For Christmas afternoon cooking and eating, try the jazz Christmas tradition again. Miles Davis’s Blue Xmas is sardonic and brilliant. Ramsey Lewis’s Sound of Christmas is warm and gorgeous. The entire tradition of jazz musicians recording Christmas albums is rich and underexplored.

For Christmas evening, when the day winds down and something more reflective is right, try classical music with a sacred quality. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio is one of the most complete and beautiful pieces of music ever written, and Christmas evening is its natural home. BBC Radio 3’s Christmas Day programming is consistently excellent and free to stream globally.

The New Year’s Eve and New Year Playlist

New Year’s Eve is one of the most emotionally complex evenings of the year. There’s the pressure of celebration alongside genuine reflection on what has passed. There’s the countdown, the midnight moment, and then the strange quiet of the early hours of January 1st. Each of these phases deserves its own music.

The build-up to midnight needs energy that escalates. Start the evening with something warm and social, gradually increasing the tempo as midnight approaches. Electronic dance music is genuinely built for this structure. A good DJ set that peaks at midnight is one of the most satisfying musical experiences possible. Boiler Room’s New Year archives have some extraordinary midnight sets worth watching.

At midnight itself, Auld Lang Syne is the obvious choice, and there’s no real alternative. Robert Burns’s poem set to a traditional Scottish melody has transcended its origins to become genuinely universal. It is sung simultaneously in dozens of languages worldwide at midnight on December 31st. That collective moment is extraordinary.

After midnight, the playlist should shift to something reflective and warm. The year is over. Something new is beginning. Music that acknowledges both the ending and the beginning is what the early hours of January 1st need. Coldplay’s The Scientist. R.E.M.’s Everybody Hurts. Bon Iver’s Holocene. Songs that hold big feelings gently.

And then, somewhere in the early hours of January 1st, you start to think about what January playlists you need. And the whole beautiful cycle begins again.

Resources for December and Beyond

A few final places worth knowing about as the year closes:

End of Year lists aggregated at Album of the Year pull together hundreds of critics’ lists globally and are invaluable for catching albums you missed across the whole year.

Rough Trade’s Album of the Year is one of the most respected independent music retail verdicts, and their December recommendations are always worth reading.

Spotify Wrapped arrives in early December and is worth engaging with, honestly. Your own listening habits across the year are a fascinating document of where you’ve been emotionally and musically.

Apple Music Replay does the same thing for Apple Music users and is equally worth exploring as a personal musical retrospective.

December is the end and the beginning. The music you choose for it matters more than in almost any other month. Make the playlists count. Let the year go out with the songs it deserves.

What does December sound like to you? What are the songs that make the whole month feel complete? I’d genuinely love to know.