Christmas Notes: “I believe in Father Christmas”

From the book “Note di Natale” by Davide Pezzi (with a preface by Arturo Stàlteri) published by VoloLibero we are currently publishing some of the 95 songs covered by the author in the 300 pages of the volume; we tried to choose the least “predictable”.

Let’s start from the title, which contains the name «Father Christmas» (literally: «Santa Claus»), a character that we are used to knowing from films and songs as Santa Claus. You will often find it written, oversimplifying a little, that Father Christmas is the name by which he is known in Great Britain, and Santa Claus overseas. In reality this is not exactly the case. Only starting from the 19th century was Father Christmas associated with the figure of the bearer of gifts, following precisely the
heavy influence in the media of the American Santa Claus.

The term Father Christmas began to be used in the 15th century, when a reference to his figure was found in a Christmas carol by Thomas Tusser; in descriptions and depictions of the time, he is portrayed as a tall, thin man with a green robe, a long, thin beard, a crowned hat, and shoes.
white, a jolly old man considered a symbol of the festive celebrations of the Christmas season, urging people to eat and drink while celebrating the birth of Jesus. Christmas is celebrated differently at this time, focusing more on adult entertainment than to today. And there is no bond between him and the children, he doesn’t bring gifts, fill stockings, or visit children’s homes at night. Today however, as we have mentioned, Father Christmas and Santa Claus are now practically synonymous, both attributable to what we call Santa Claus in Italy.

And it is this figure that Greg Lake refers to in “I Believe in Father Christmas”, written by him and Peter Sinfield in 1975, taking advantage of a break in the progressive rock band Emerson, Lake & Palmer, of which he is the bassist and singer. One day in August 1975, at his home in London, Lake tuned the bottom string of his acoustic guitar from E to D, obtaining
thus a different overall sound of the instrument.

The melody of the song is born on an arpeggio that the musician creates with the modified tuning, a music that spins in his head for a few days, until he thinks that perhaps it could become a song about Christmas. “For me as a child, it was the visual image of peace on earth and good will towards men” – he said years later – “It was the symbol of generosity, of feeling good and all those things. And that’s what I think Christmas is.” Since in the same days he is collaborating with the poet and lyricist Pete Sinfield – old friend and collaborator of Lake’s first band, King Crimson – for some songs that will be part of ELP’s “Works” album, Lake makes him hear the melody and she tells him it could be a Christmas song. .

To write the text Sinfield turns to his childhood memories.

“It was partly based on a real thing in my life when I was eight years old and went down the stairs to see this wonderful Christmas tree that my mother had made,” he said. “Then the song goes from there to a bigger thing, about how people are brainwashed into things. Then I thought, “This is getting a little depressing. There better be a happy, hopeful verse at the end.” The opening verse alludes to the brainwashing Sinfield mentions, since the promises.
perpetuals of a white Christmas are betrayed by a constant rain. The narrator recalls a time when the trappings of the holidays fascinated him, the sights, sounds and smells filling his head and heart. In the second verse, some of the cynicism that adulthood tends to generate begins to filter into the narrative: «They sold me a Christmas dream / I
they sold a silent night.” The Christmas ideals that were once sacred and pure become commodities to be sold on every corner. To mitigate the bitterness of the lyrics, Lake and Sinfield close the song with a phrase that is perhaps ambiguous, but which leaves the door open to hope: “Have the Christmas you deserve.”

When he listens to the almost finished song, his friend and colleague Keith Emerson suggests inserting, between the sung verses, an instrumental riff taken from the “Troika” section of Sergei Prokofiev’s “Lieutenant Kijé Suite”, written for the 1934 Soviet film ” Lieutenant Kiže” (another part of the same suite would be used ten years later by Sting for the melody of “Russians”).
“I Believe in Father Christmas” was released in November 1975, and somewhat surprisingly reached number two in the singles chart, kept off the top by Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”. «I was beaten by one of the greatest records ever made. I would have been pissed if I had been beaten by Cliff Richard” was Lake’s comment. A video of the song was also shot, which was unusual for the time (MTV was born six years later), in the Sinai peninsula in Egypt and in the caves of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the West Bank.

Greg Lake explained the choice as follows: «The Christmas song, its essence, the beginning of the story is religious and dates back to Israel.

And that’s where we shot the film. The idea came up to shoot it in the caves of the Dead Sea Scrolls. It seemed like a nice idea, you know, it seemed tempting… until I actually had to do it. It involved climbing up this ledge and there were hundreds of meters of sheer drop on either side, and the route was just over half a meter wide. It seems like a lot, half a meter, but with a drop of more than a hundred meters on each side, half a meter becomes very small, and it was very scary. (…) It was very hot. Incredible heat: I could only film maybe 20 or 30 seconds and then I had to take shelter… The sun was very fierce.” The video also includes footage from the Vietnam War and the Six-Day War, and some scenes shot in the desert with Bedouins. “Really good looking people: pearly white teeth, dark oak tan, incredible looking people” – Lake said – “We sat down and they filmed them, I played the guitar and they listened happily. It was an extraordinary thing.”

Greg Lake would record the song again with ELP in 1977 for the album “Works Volume 2”, with a more sparse arrangement and without the orchestra, and then again in 1993 and 2002 for the compilation “A Classic Rock Christmas” . Like any self-respecting Christmas classic, “I Believe in Father Christmas” has also been remade by various artists, we will limit ourselves to mentioning the two versions
a cappella performances by the Swingle Singers and Flying Pickets, and those by U2, Robbie Williams and Tony Hadley.