"A Holly Jolly Christmas" (also called "Have a Holly Jolly Christmas") is a

Christmas song Christmas music comprises a variety of genres of music regularly performed or heard around the Christmas season. Music associated with Christmas may be purely instrumental, or, in the case of carols or songs, may employ lyrics whose subject m ...

written by

Johnny Marks John David Marks (November 10, 1909 – September 3, 1985) was an American songwriter. He specialized in Christmas songs (although he himself was Jewish and did not celebrate Christmas) and wrote many holiday standards, including " Rudolph the R ...

and most famously performed by

Burl Ives Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives (June 14, 1909 – April 14, 1995) was an American musician, actor, and author with a career that spanned more than six decades. Ives began his career as an itinerant singer and guitarist, eventually launching his own rad ...

. The song has since become one of the top 25 most-performed "holiday" songs written by

ASCAP The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) () is an American not-for-profit performance-rights organization (PRO) that collectively licenses the public performance rights of its members' musical works to venues, broadca ...

members, for the first five years of the 21st century.

Background

"A Holly Jolly Christmas" was written by Johnny Marks in 1962. It was the title song of The Quinto Sisters' first album, ''Holly Jolly Christmas'', recorded in June 1964 for

Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music, Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese Conglomerate (company), conglomerate Sony. It was founded on Janua ...

, featuring guitarist

Al Caiola Alexander Emil Caiola (September 7, 1920 – November 9, 2016) was an American guitarist, composer and arranger, who spanned a variety of music genres including jazz, country, rock, and pop. He recorded over fifty albums and worked with some of ...

with arrangements by Frank Hunter and

Marty Manning Martin Manning (April 26, 1916 – November 22, 1971) was a Grammy-winning American arranger and conductor of popular music, most noted for his work at Columbia Records in the 1950s and early 1960s when he was "one of the most in-demand arran ...

. The song was featured in the 1964

Rankin-Bass Rankin/Bass Animated Entertainment (founded and formerly known as Videocraft International, Ltd. and Rankin/Bass Productions, Inc.) was an American production company located in New York City, and known for its seasonal television specials, usual ...

Christmas special, ''

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is a fictional reindeer created by Robert L. May. Rudolph is usually depicted as the ninth and youngest of Santa Claus's reindeer, using his luminous red nose to lead the reindeer team and guide Santa's sleigh on ...

'', in which Burl Ives voiced the narrator, Sam the Snowman. Originally to be sung by

Larry D. Mann Larry D. Mann (18 December 1922 – 6 January 2014) was a Canadian actor. He was best known as "The Boss" in a series of Bell Canada television commercials in the 1980s and for voicing the character of Yukon Cornelius in ''Rudolph the Red-Nose ...

as Yukon Cornelius, the song, as well as " Silver and Gold", was given to Ives due to his singing fame. This version was also included on the soundtrack album. The song was re-recorded by Ives and released in 1964 as a single and later featured the following year in his 1965 holiday album, '' Have a Holly Jolly Christmas''. This version of the song has a somewhat slower arrangement than the ''Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer'' version and features a twelve-string guitar solo introduction; it is this version that has since become the more commonly heard rendition on radio. This song mentions mistletoe in the bridge, where the singer asks the younger lover to "Kiss her once for me". The song features a mixed-gender chorus, whose repeated "Ding-dong" imitation of Christmas bells are heard in the outro of the song, before it fades out. The song's enduring popularity is evidenced by its reaching No. 30 on the ''

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertis ...

Adult Contemporary Adult contemporary music (AC) is a form of radio-played popular music, ranging from 1960s vocal and 1970s soft rock music to predominantly ballad-heavy music of the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, soul, R&B, quiet ...

chart in 1998, as well as No. 21 on the US Country

Digital Songs The Digital Songs or Digital Song Sales chart (previously named Hot Digital Songs) ranks the best-selling digital songs in the United States, as compiled by Nielsen SoundScan and published by ''Billboard'' magazine. Although it originally starte ...

chart and No. 5 on the Holiday 100 chart in 2011. The song charted on the

Billboard Hot 100 The ''Billboard'' Hot 100 is the music industry standard record chart in the United States for songs, published weekly by ''Billboard'' magazine. Chart rankings are based on sales (physical and digital), radio play, and online streaming ...

for the first time in 2017, after rules on chart eligibility for older songs had been relaxed several years before, and reached a peak of No. 38. On the week ending December 8, 2018, the song re-entered the Hot 100 chart. It reached No. 10 on the week ending January 5, 2019. On the week ending January 4, 2020, it reached a new peak of No. 4. With this feat, Ives now holds the record for the longest break between Hot 100 Top Tens as he returned to this minimum ranking after 56 years, seven months and two weeks since his previous Top 10 hit and, at 109 years after birth, surpassing Louis Armstrong's "

What a Wonderful World "What a Wonderful World" is a song written by Bob Thiele (as "George Douglas") and George David Weiss. It was first recorded by Louis Armstrong and released in 1967 as a single. It topped the pop chart in the United Kingdom, but performed p ...

" (which reached the Top 40 when Armstrong would have been 86 years old) as the oldest artist, living or deceased, to have a Top 40 hit. As of December 2019, Burl Ives' recording has sold 664,000 copies in the United States since becoming available for download in the digital era.

Chart performance

Burl Ives version

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Alan Jackson version

Michael Bublé version

Lady Antebellum version

Jerrod Niemann version

Certifications

Burl Ives version

Michael Bublé version

Notes

References

External links

All Music Guide AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the datab ...

br>A Holly Jolly Christmas - Burl Ives
* Lyric

{{DEFAULTSORT:Holly Jolly Christmas 1964 songs American Christmas songs Burl Ives songs Decca Records singles Lady A songs Olivia Newton-John songs Songs written by Johnny Marks Johnny Mathis songs Michael Bublé songs