Holiday

Holiday music, sometimes labeled simply "Holiday" on genre lists, is less a single musical style and more a seasonal tag. AllMusic describes it as music typically heard in celebration of a given holiday event, then not heard again until that event rolls around the next year, and while it is most associated with Christmas, the category also covers things like Halloween novelty songs and Independence Day marches (AllMusic, n.d.-d). Think of it less like a genre defined by sound, the way jazz or blues is, and more like a folder on a calendar. The songs inside come in every style, but they all get pulled out at the same time of year.

Christmas music specifically is the biggest branch of this category. It spans choral, pop, rock, country, and jazz recordings, all united by one thing: they are about Christmas (AllMusic, n.d.-e). Its roots go back much further than the recording industry. Christmas carols and hymns were sung for centuries before radio existed, and the early 1800s saw many of them printed and spread widely for home use rather than only sung in church (Christmas music, n.d.).

Most Christmas songs before the 1900s carried a religious character tied to the Nativity story. That changed during the Great Depression, when a wave of popular American songs leaned into cultural and secular themes, such as snow, gift-giving, and family, instead of explicitly religious ones (Christmas music, n.d.). Recordings like Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" turned seasonal songs into a recurring pop culture ritual, where the same classics return to radio and choir songbooks every winter (AllMusic, n.d.-d). By the mid-1950s, much of the genre had shifted further, adding romantic themes that simply used Christmas as a backdrop, alongside a new wave of comedic novelty songs (Christmas music, n.d.). Together, this mix is a bit like a snowball rolling downhill. It started small with church hymns, but picked up new layers, secular, romantic, and comedic, as it grew.

Sources:

AllMusic. (n.d.-d). Holiday music genre overview. https://www.allmusic.com/genre/holiday-ma0000012075
AllMusic. (n.d.-e). Christmas music subgenre overview. https://www.allmusic.com/subgenre/christmas-ma0000011929
Christmas music. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holiday_album