Tyler Clark presents: Local Mythologies writesTop 25 Christmas Songs of the Last 25 Years: #25 - The Posies, “Christmas”

It's the holiday season, which means Christmas music. Lots and lots or Christmas music, most of which was written before the people listening to it were even alive. While "Jingle Bells" and "We Three Kings" are great, and resilient, we're devoting this year to finding the best Christmas song written since 1989. We begin today, with #25.
 

#25: The Posies, "Christmas" (1996)

I'm going to open this countdown with a bold assertion: compared to the 2000s, the '90s were a terrible time for indie-rock Christmas tunes. Whether it was fatigue from the charity single explosion of the mid-1980s or the slack-assed Gen-X jadedness that colored most of the decade, it suddenly stopped being cool to write your own holiday music if you weren't Mariah Carey or NSYNC.

Fortunately, the Posies were fine with being squares. On the simply-titled "Christmas," singer Ken Stringfellow quietly turns in one the best performances on Geffen Records' 1996 Christmas compilation Just Say Noel. Instead of hiding behind irony (Sonic Youth's "Santa Doesn't Cop Out on Dope") or turning in a smirking adaptation of a classic (Beck's "The Little Drum Machine Boy"), the Posies' frontman does what he does best: sing a delicate song about feeling uncool feelings at a time of year when everyone else is happy. It's the best (and most melancholy) four minutes on the entire compilation, and one of the finest holiday songs from a decade not known for them.