4 January 1973
There’s some irony in John and Yoko’s perennial Yuletide anthem for peace being kept off Ireland’s 1972 Christmas number one spot by a song about an Irish bandit shooting a British Army officer. That said, given that year’s events and chart-topping singles, plus Ireland’s liking for Christmas number ones that have a body count, maybe it was to have been expected. Anyway, come the new year we get it here at last. Besides, ‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over)’ didn’t top the UK charts that Christmas or at all; also somewhat ironically, it was kept off the UK top spot by an American singing about being from Liverpool. (That song waits Chapman-like for us next.) In fact, the only two countries where it went to number one are Ireland and Luxembourg. Even then, the official IRMA database at irishcharts.ie lists it as only getting to number two in Ireland. However, Irish charts reproduced from that time, such as on the most excellent UKMIX chart discussion forum, show it as reaching number one. So, and with apologies to Luxembourger Number Ones for crowding the field, it makes the cut here.
At the time of writing… well, at any time in human history an anti-war song is a laudable idea. And John and Yoko’s earlier ‘Give Peace A Chance’—an Irish top ten hit during the inauspicious month for peace in Ireland of August 1969—met the brief as a bolshie yet cheerful protest chant. However, the ones that top our charts have tended to be trite: Culture Club’s rinky-dink ‘The War Song’; Simple Minds’s pompous ‘Belfast Child’; even Paul McCartney’s ‘Pipes Of Peace’, which you have to suspect was Paul’s effort to match John and Yoko with his own Christmas anti-war anthem. (Coincidentally, ‘Pipes of Peace’ also fell short of the UK Christmas number one spot and also only topped the Irish charts in January.) Those three accursed chart-toppers only serve to make me think we should give pro-war songs a fair listen.
So, how does the Christmas anti-war song by the writer of “imagine no possessions” compare? Well, while it lacks the raw clout of ‘Give Peace A Chance’, you’ll surely agree that ‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over)’ clears the low-to-subterranean bar of being better than ‘Belfast Child’ on the anti-war side and ‘Mistletoe And Wine’ on the pro-Christmas front. Yes, the thing inevitably veers into ‘imagine no war’; its Big Idea that “War is over / If you want it” is the sort of luxury thinking you get when preaching down at the pavement from your penthouse. I assume the excruciating “Let’s stop all the fight” was written with finger-painting.
All that said, there’s still a good deal here to like. The opening two lines are memorable and bracing. The chorus, for all my misgivings about it being simplistic, is an all-embracing and well-meaning singalong. Best of all, Lennon’s sentimentality and lack of self-awareness, the downfall of many of his solo singles, are somewhat mitigated here by the energy of the Harlem Community Choir and the sharp Situationist vibe of Yoko, the second-coolest Beatle after Ringo. I’m fine with hearing ‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over)’ every Christmas; I don’t suppose it’d do any harm to hear it the rest of the year either.
