Welcome to the 2025 Heistmas Advent Calendar, a daily drop of pop culture Christmas icons, oddities, and joy. Check back every day from now through December 25 for each daily entry!
Everyone's got their own picks for the best Christmas song of all time, and I won't deny anyone else their favorites. For me, though, it's not Christmas until Darlene Love sings.
In 1963, Love contributed to the now-classic compilation album A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector, and stepped in for none other than Ronnie Spector herself to sing a new composition titled "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)." The song, like the album, was not a huge hit in the wake of the Kennedy assassination that holiday season, but time has been inarguably kind to it. For me, it's the best Christmas song you can possibly play, but only when Love is on vocals.
The original track is laced with the kind of raw power you'd almost expect from something like a Stooges record, just waves of sound hitting you, underlined by sleigh bells. It's Spector's legendary "Wall of Sound" production style gone into overdrive, and then Love's vocal comes in, cutting through the instrumentation, and suddenly you're in church. There's something so magical about it, in everything from the buildup to the first verse to the saxophone solo in the middle, with Love over the top of the whole thing. There are many other classics on the record, including The Ronettes' legendary version of "Sleigh Ride," but Love's signature song reigns over all of them, over all of Christmas pop music.
If you know "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)," there's a good chance it's because you first heard it watching David Letterman. In 1986, Letterman invited Love on his Late Night show at NBC to perform the song with his house band, igniting a Christmas tradition that would continue until Letterman's retirement from The Late Show in 2014. In writing this for the Advent Calendar, I realized something about the song in this context, something that might explain why I love it so much.
December of 1986 was my first Christmas, which means my infant eyes and ears were perceiving the holiday for the first time just as Darlene Love was belting out her song on national television. Call it a coincidence. I call it Christmas magic.
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