And we’re back with a seasonal series of posts about my favourite Christmas music. For anyone fearing the worst, no, a certain song written by George Michael won’t be featuring. Nor will a certain infamous seasonal track by Mariah Carrey.

Instead, I’m going for the more quirky – and probably rather less played – stuff. Things that you may never have heard before and things that (hopefully) won’t induce you to groan. To kick things off, then, a track by Tom Petty and it was written for the charity album ‘A Very Special Christmas 2’.

So what can I say about this? Well, it’s a very…Tom Petty Christmas song. It has humour (“Long distance relatives/Haven’t seen ’em in a long, long time/Yeah I kinda missed them/I just don’t wanna kiss them!”) and it never ceases to make me smile when I hear it. It’s about the perfect summation of a REAL Christmas holiday, as opposed to the Hallmark version.

There’s no broken hearts or schmaltz and schmoop, just a lot of fun and dancing. Kids having fun. And it finishes with one of the best Christmas wishlists!

You can find my Christmas With a Twist playlist on Spotify.

That’s all for now. Happy reading and listening!