This article was originally published on Dec. 15, 2021.
It’s one of the most distinctive (or inescapable, depending on your perspective) elements of the holiday season: Christmas music. The familiar collection of sentimental tunes begins to take over airwaves and filter through coffee shop speakers around Thanksgiving weekend and essentially becomes the soundtrack for the entire month of December.
But what is it that makes Christmas music so distinct? While in some ways it might seem obvious, there are a few surprising characteristics of holiday songs that tell us as much about ourselves as our winter traditions.
Joe Bennett, a forensic musicologist at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, attempted to answer the question back in 2017. He looked at the lyrics, tempo, vocals and other elements of the 78 most-streamed holiday tunes on Spotify.
