Ireland's Favourite Christmas Song

I was curious to see what Ireland’s favourite Christmas song is, and since there was a bizarre variation on some websites I visited, I ran a fairly unscientific poll on the patients (and their parents) of Swords Orthodontics.

No dental-themed songs like “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth” or “I want a smile for Christmas”, or even pun-tastic ones like “Little Gummy Boy”.

There’s usually an orthodontic tie-in with my blogs, even when they’re a bit daft, and I think this one shows you that when you want to be scientific, when you declare something to be true, you need to be very standardised in your approach. If you are delivering a survey, or any kind of research, you need to be sure that your sample represents the wider population and they were all treated the same way. I can't vouch for any of that...

For the record, these orthodontic patients were asked in December 2018, and they varied in age between 8 and 60 years old, which is typical of the patients we see at Swords Orthodontics. There is a fair balance of male and female patients. I didn’t ask the age of any of the parents!

I might do it again and make a note of the age and gender of the people giving the individual answers, but who wants to take all the fun out of it by over-analysing things?

What was interesting was that “All I want for Christmas is you” by Mariah Carey was well ahead until the last 6 days. Then Mariah was spectacularly passed and never caught up with our runaway winner.

Third and fourth place were consistent from the start and worthy additions to any Christmas playlist- “Last Christmas” by Wham! and “Driving Home for Christmas” by Chris Rea. “Do They Know it’s Christmas” by Band Aid was just demoted from fifth to sixth on the second last day of polling. Curiously all 80s releases, but popular with patients of all ages.

The winner, by a solid margin was – of course – the Christmas song that’s not just for Christmas, “Fairytale of New York” by Kirsty MacColl and The Pogues. I had a patient’s mum tell me this afternoon she actually saw them (yes, Pogues and Kirsty) perform it at Kentish Town Forum back in the day - and she was surprised to hear I'd been in the same place a few weeks ago ( to see Michael Schenker, see the earlier blog).

What delights me most though when I look at the list is the number of songs that only had 1 vote - so many Christmas songs, but there’s one song that means something special to one individual person. Most of these polls have the Pogues getting as many votes as every other act put together - not in Swords Orthodontics, where they got about 30%. It’s great to see Swords Ortho patients have such broad appreciation of music and connect with such a variety of singers and bands in different decades and genres.

There were a few great stories and loads of smiles while the patients tried to chose one, but the best ones were when the ones that didn’t hesitate with an answer – that’s a song that’s part of the DNA in these people.

And a special mention to the lady who said "That one by the Pogues...", thinking of the title, and before I could say "Fairytale...?" she completed her sentence with "...A Rainy Night in Soho".

And if Die Hard can be a Christmas movie, then Rainy Night in Soho can be a Christmas Song.