“I Believe in Father Christmas” is a song by progressive rock band Emerson, Lake & Palmer (ELP). The song was written by Greg Lake and Pete Sinfield (King Crimson) and was released as a single in 1975. It features Greg Lake on vocals and acoustic guitar, Keith Emerson on synthesizers, and Carl Palmer on percussion.
I was out driving one day and it was playing on my mind, and, all of a sudden, it occurred to me that the tune of ‘Jingle Bells’ fitted over it. And I thought, ‘Ah…I wonder if this could be a song about Christmas! At the same time, I was working with Pete Sinfield on my solo side of the Works album, and I said to Pete, “I’ve been working on this melodic idea. It could be a Christmas song.
Greg Lake
Released in 1975, the song reached number 2 on the UK Singles Chart. Lake wrote the song at his west London home, after tuning the bottom string of his guitar from E down to D. The instrumental riff between verses comes from the “Troika” portion of Sergei Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kijé Suite, written for the 1934 Soviet film Lieutenant Kijé;
this was added at the suggestion of Keith Emerson (an adaptation of the same song was used on Emerson’s later The Christmas Album (1988)). Peter Sinfield described the song as “a picture-postcard Christmas, with morbid edges.” The song was recorded by Lake in 1974 and released separately from ELP in 1975.
The video for the record was shot on the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, and in the Dead Sea Scrolls[1] caves in the West Bank, and includes footage from the Vietnam War and Six-Day War.
The beginning of the story is religious and it goes back to Israel… It [the shoot] involved climbing across this ledge and there was hundreds of feet of sheer drop, both sides… So I got inside the Dead Sea Scroll caves. They’re tiny little caves the size of a bathroom, really.
Greg Lake
They said there'll be snow at Christmas
They said there'll be peace on earth
But instead it just kept on raining
A veil of tears for the virgin birth
The lyrics do, in fact, paint a vivid picture of the narrator as a boy being taught the true meaning of Christmas, only to find out later in life that it’s all a clever disguise.
I remember one Christmas morning
A winter's light and a distant choir
And the peal of a bell and that Christmas tree smell
And their eyes full of tinsel and fire
I find it appalling when people say it’s politically incorrect to talk about Christmas. You’ve got to talk about ‘the Holiday Season.’ Christmas was a time of family warmth and love. There was a feeling of forgiveness, acceptance. And I do believe in Father Christmas. [known in America as Santa Claus] Greg Lake
They sold me a dream of Christmas
They sold me a silent night
And they told me a fairy story
'Til I believed in the Israelite
And I believed in father Christmas
I looked to the sky with excited eyes
That I woke with a yawn in the first light of dawn
And I saw him and through his disguise
Some of it was based on an actual thing in my life when I was eight years old, and came downstairs to see this wonderful Christmas tree that my mother had done. I was that little boy. Then it goes from there into a wider thing about how people are brainwashed into stuff.
Pete Sinfield
I wish you a hopeful Christmas
I wish you a brave new year
All anguish, pain and sadness
Leave your heart and let your road be clear
They said there'd be snow at Christmas
They said there'll be peace on earth
Hallelujah, Noel be it heaven or hell
The Christmas we get we deserve
Then I thought, ‘This is getting a bit depressing. I’d better have a hopeful, cheerful verse at the end.’ That’s the bit where me and Greg would’ve sat together and done it. And then I twisted the whole thing, with the last line, ‘The Christmas you get, you deserve,’ which was a play on ‘The government you get, you deserve.’ I didn’t necessarily explain all the politics or the thoughts behind it. It’s not anti-religious. It’s a humanist thing, I suppose. It’s not an atheist Christmas song, as some have said.
Pete Sinfield
Footnotes
- The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of Jewish texts discovered between 1947 and 1956 in the vicinity of the Dead Sea, near the ancient settlement of Qumran. The scrolls date back to the Second Temple period (circa 530 BCE to 70 CE) and include religious and non-religious texts, providing valuable insights into the beliefs, practices, and history of ancient Judaism. The collection comprises biblical manuscripts, apocryphal and deuterocanonical works, sectarian documents, and other writings, shedding light on the diversity of Jewish thought during the Second Temple period. The discovery significantly impacted the fields of biblical studies, archaeology, and the understanding of Judaism’s development. The texts are written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, and they are considered one of the most important archaeological finds of the 20th century. [Back]
Further Reading
Sources
- “I Believe in Father Christmas” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Believe_in_Father_Christmas#Release
- “I Believe In Father Christmas by Greg Lake” https://www.songfacts.com/facts/greg-lake/i-believe-in-father-christmas
- “The Story of… ‘I Believe in Father Christmas’ by Greg Lake” (Dec 3, 2020) https://www.smoothradio.com/features/the-story-of/greg-lake-i-believe-in-father-christmas-meaning/
- ““I Believe In Father Christmas,” By Greg Lake” https://americansongwriter.com/believe-father-christmas-greg-lake/
