If I told you Songs In The Key Of Life was my favorite album of all time, would you believe me?
Well, you should. Stevie Wonder’s 1970s output is absolutely impeccable, but I don’t think any recorded work has ever touched my soul as much as that one.
Stevie, man. I mean, MAN, man.
And you gotta love any Christmas song with which Stevie blew off the barn door in December 1967, with a smile so big you can hear it.
What Christmas Means To Me is three minutes of pure joy compressed into Motown vinyl. The tune just bursts into the holiday season like somebody plugged Christmas directly into a wall socket. And it immediately just roars to life with absolute joy.
From the opening bassline, sleigh bells and then those sweet bursts of electric keyboard, you know instantly you’re stepping into something wondrous. The horns punch, the percussion punches, the rhythm section bounces around like it’s had one too many cups of cocoa, and Stevie sits right in the middle of all of it, radiating joy so contagious it should come with a warning label.
And nothing in What Christmas Means To Me ever feels forced. Ever. It feels like Stevie genuinely cannot help but shout what the season means to him. He sounds like someone who just got handed a mug of hot chocolate, saw the first snowfall of the year, and immediately ran outside to sing about it to strangers.
And you damn well know, that stopped and smiled and sang and clapped along to every last note.
There’s a kind of unstoppable earnestness here; this confection is unselfconscious, unembarrassed, unfiltered joy. This is not ironic Christmas. Heck it ain’t even atmospheric Christmas. This is Christmas while you’re singing and dancing in the kitchen and oops! the Christmas cookies might be burning, but the song ain’t over yet, let ’em burn, we’ll just make more.
All of that, and wrapped up with that classic Motown production. Clean. Punchy. Full of life.
And Stevie man. His voice here is just so alive. Every line bounces, flips, and glides its way right into your happy zones. And he makes it sound effortless too. But listen to the precision underneath: the rhythmic placement, the smile in the phrasing, the melodic lift. Genius, man.
What Christmas Means To Me celebrates the moment, not the nostalgia. Sure it idealizes Christmastime, but it does so now in the now. It makes December feel like a celebration instead of an obligation. What Christmas means to Stevie is what Christmas should mean to anyone who remembers how to be delighted: warmth, movement, color, music, romance, rhythm, and a wild gratitude for being right here, right now in this bright little corner of winter.
Three minutes of pure holiday spirit. And it kicks serious yuletide butt.
Mills
A South Florida native and part-time iguana, Mills has slaved in the mine-pits of Information Technology since 1995, finding solace in writing about the things he loves like music, fitness, movies, theme parks, gaming, and Norwegian Hammer Prancing. He has written and published hundreds (thousands?) of reviews since 2000, because Geeking Out over your obsessions is the Cosmic Order Of Things. He is, at heart, a 6'3 freewheeling Aquarius forever constrained by delusions of adequacy.