Taylor Swift’s Best Holiday Songs: ‘Tis the Damn Season,’ ‘New Year’s Day’ and More

Credit: David Fisher/Shutterstock

Taylor Swift's Best Holiday Songs: 'Tis the Damn Season,' 'New Year's Day' and More

’Tis the damn season! The holidays may come once a year, but Taylor Swift’s Christmastime catalog is the gift that keeps on giving — all year round. The Grammy winner released her Christmas album, The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection (originally titled Taylor Swift: Sounds of the Season), in 2007. She dropped two original festive tracks on the record — “Christmases When You Were Mine,” and “Christmas Must Be Something More” — in addition to country-tinged covers of several holiday classics, including “White Christmas” and “Santa Baby.” While the Holiday Collection is Swift’s only album of Christmas songs, the singer-songwriter has an innate love of the festive season due to growing up on a Christmas tree farm in Pennsylvania. (In addition to her tune “Christmas Tree Farm” about this childhood experience, the “Maroon” artist has also sprinkled in bits of holiday cheer throughout various songs over the years.) “I actually did grow up on a Christmas tree farm,” Swift wrote via Twitter in December 2019, upon the release of the track. “In a gingerbread house, deep within the yummy gummy gumdrop forest. Where, funnily enough, this song is their national anthem.” Five years earlier, the “Cardigan” singer took Esquire on a tour of her hometown — and her childhood farm. [jwplayer zYfKLs96-zhNYySv2] “It was such a weird place to grow up,” she told the magazine in 2014. “But it has cemented in me this unnatural level of excitement about fall and then the holiday season. My friends are so sick of me talking about autumn coming. They’re like, ‘What are you, an elf?'” Since then, Swift has come out with a number of songs that mention Christmastime. Most direct is her Reputation track "New Year’s Day," which details a New Year’s Eve party and holding onto a loved one in the aftermath. “There's glitter on the floor after the party / Girls carrying their shoes down in the lobby,” she sings on the pre-chorus. “Candle wax and Polaroids on the hardwood floor, You and me from the night before.” The chorus follows: “But don’t read the last page / But I stay when you're lost and I'm scared and you’re turning away / I want your midnights / But I'll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year's Day.” On 2020’s Evermore, Swift sings about a hometown love when coming home for the holidays on “’Tis the Damn Season.” Another fan-favorite tune with a Christmas mention is 2014’s “Begin Again,” the last track on Red. “But you start to talk / About the movies that your family watches / Every single Christmas / And I wanna talk about that,” the “Tim McGraw” artist croons on the bridge. Keep scrolling for all the holiday mentions in Swift’s lengthy discography:

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'Tis the Damn Season'

“We could call it even / You could call me babe for the weekend,” Swift sings on the Evermore track, as the character in the song reminisces about a forgotten love from her childhood.’”Tis the damn season, write this down / I’m stayin' at my parents' house / And the road not taken looks real good now.”

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'Christmas Tree Farm'

This 2019 ode to her childhood farm is one of Swift’s most standard-sounding songs. She harkens back to the nostalgia of her youth growing up on a Christmas tree farm on the track, singing, “My winter nights are taken up by static / Stress, and holiday shopping traffic / But I close my eyes, and I'm somewhere else / Just like magic,” she begins. “In my heart is a Christmas tree farm / Where the people would come / To dance under sparkling lights / Bundled up in their mittens and coats / And the cider would flow / And I just wanna be there tonight.”

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'Last Christmas'

Swift’s most popular holiday tune is a cover of Wham!’s 1984 hit “Last Christmas.”

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'Back to December'

The Speak Now song is a confirmed ode to ex-boyfriend Taylor Lautner and their 2009 breakup at the end of the year. While the tune doesn’t directly mention Christmas or the holidays, the December setting is enough to conjure up images of cold nights and lonely hearts.

“So this is me swallowin' my pride / Standin' in front of you sayin' I'm sorry for that night / And I go back to December all the time,” Swift sings on the chorus. “It turns out freedom ain't nothin' but missin' you / Wishin' I'd realized what I had when you were mine / I’d go back to December, turn around and make it alright / I go back to December all the time.”

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‘New Year’s Day’

The only Swift song about explicitly about the holidays to appear on a non-Christmas album, the Pennsylvania native reminisces about a New Year’s Eve party the night before as she cleans up with — and wants to hold on to — her love.

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'Begin Again'

The final Red track — widely rumored to be about Swift’s ex-boyfriend Conor Kennedy — isn’t overtly about the holidays, but does contain the lyric, “And you start to talk / About the movies that your family watches / Every single Christmas / And I wanna talk about that.”

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'White Christmas'

After the success of her debut, self-titled album in 2006, Swift recorded her Christmas record when she was still very much in her country era. Her cover of Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” — the original is the best-selling single in the world — has an undeniable twang as she belts out the familiar lyrics.

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'Christmases When You Were Mine'

In the vein of melancholy holiday tunes like “Blue Christmas” and “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” Swift gets in her feels on this original Christmas track. “But there were Christmases when you were mine / I’ve been doing fine without you, really,” she sings on the chorus. “Up until the nights got cold / And eveybody's here except you, baby.”

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'Christmas Must Be Something More'

The “State of Grace” singer gets surprisingly religious on this Holiday Collection song, crooning about Jesus, “Here’s to the birthday boy who saved our lives.”

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'Silent Night'

Swift’s version of “Silent Night” is full of lush string instruments and an acoustic sound.

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'Santa Baby'

The “Happiness” musician put her own country spin on the fun and festive Eartha Kitt hit.