Today in 1970, the release of a song that has become a holiday classic, even if it took a couple decades to get there: Donny Hathaway’s “This Christmas.”
Hathaway was born in Chicago; he grew up in St. Louis, where he sang in the church choir and started learning to play piano.
He studied music at Howard University before moving back to Chicago to work for Curtis Mayfield’s record label.
After playing and working on sessions for a number of soul and R&B greats, Hathaway started releasing his own records in 1969 and 1970.
He could write, arrange, produce and perform, and he was as ambitious as he was talented.
One of his goals was to write a Christmas song that would become a standard; while a lot of Black musicians had released successful holiday albums, Hathaway thought there should be a Black songwriter’s name in the standard December songbook.
He came up with a bouncy, soulful number, to which Nadine McKinnor added lyrics about that feeling when you’re looking forward to spending the holidays with that special someone, and how sometimes that feeling is so big and bright that it spreads out into the wider world.
It was fun, it was funky, the melody line could get stuck in anyone’s head… in all, “This Christmas” had everything a great Christmas song should have.
And yet, when it came out in 1970, it wasn’t much of a hit.
The leader of Hathaway’s songwriting workshop, when he first heard “This Christmas,” said something like “nobody wants a new Christmas song.”
Maybe that’s how music listeners back then felt about it.
For its first two decades, the song was out in the world, but it wasn’t getting the same attention as the Christmas classics.
But that changed in the 1990s, when the rise of compact discs led to record labels reissuing older songs to new audiences.
Hathaway’s song started to find that wider audience when it ended up on a CD collection called “Soul Christmas.” .
Other singers started recording and releasing their own versions of “This Christmas,” everyone from Aretha Franklin to Sabrina Carpenter.
There are some great cover versions… and there’s that time in 1996 when Patti LaBelle tried to sing it at the lighting of the national Christmas tree in Washington, but her cue cards weren’t cued up and her background singers were MIA, so she had to sort of improv her way through the song.
I love that wild accidental take on the song, but the original may still be the very best version.
It’s become the standard Donny Hathaway always hoped it would be: chances are, if you encounter any amount of seasonal music over the next few weeks, you’ll hear at least a little bit of “This Christmas”… this Christmas.
Salami Advent Calendar, Czech Republic. podnikovka.cz/uzeniny_c103…
— Present & Correct (@presentcorrect.bsky.social) November 20, 2025 at 3:13 PM
Here in the US, a lot of people are counting down the days until Christmas with Advent calendars.
You open up those little windows and there’s a chocolate inside, or maybe a new type of tea, or even a little LEGO project.
According to the social media account Present & Correct, in the Czech Republic you can get an Advent calendar that’s made of salami!
There are measurements on the wrapping so the calendar-holder knows just how much salami to slice each day.
Donny Hathaway’s “This Christmas” (Chicago Sun-Times via Archive.org)
Salami Advent Calendar, Czech Republic (Present & Correct via Bluesky)
