WHETHER you need to create an atmosphere at a party or just want to play some music while putting up the Christmas tree, these tracks selected by The Herald team are guaranteed to invoke nostalgia and keep you smiling all the way through December.

Donald Martin, editor-in-chief

Walking in the Air from The Snowman (1982)

This just brings a smile to my face recalling that brilliant Irn Bru advert.

Christmas should be fun but sadly most of the festive tunes are played so often they grate after a while. 

David McCann (news editor), Martin Williams (senior reporter) and Carolyn Churchill (deputy news editor)

Fairytale of New York by The Pogues featuring Kirsty MacColl (1987)

David: I’m Irish. At Christmas I drink. This festive anthem brings on the feels.

Martin: In four minutes this song lays waste to the starry-eyed saccharine schmaltz of the opposition by telling it as it is. Christmas is not all happy clappy, it is for many bitter-sweet and this painfully honest song encapsulates the reality of the festive period perfectly.

There's a reason it has been cited as the best Christmas song of all time in various television, radio and magazine related polls in the UK and Ireland.

And after all these years it still puts a tear in the old eye, and sends shivers down the spine. 

Carolyn: Without a doubt Fairytale of New York is the best Christmas song ever.

In amongst all the schmaltz, what could be better than the gruff voice of Shane MacGowan tempered with the gorgeous Kirsty MacColl. It’s not Christmas until you hear it for the first time.

Special shout-out also for my favourite (or rather, most annoyingly catchy) kids’ song. I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas!

Mark Eadie, production editor

Only You by The Flying Pickets (1983)

Six working-class blokes in a dingy pub who look like they are either on copious amounts of Mogadon or on day-release from the local middle-aged offenders institute (or is that prison). What can go wrong?

Everything, but fortunately nothing.

Whoever came up with the concept of transforming Yazoo’s pop gem into an acapella masterpiece is nothing short of genius. The vocals are bizarre, brilliantly timed and just fascinating. As a ten-year-old I was amazed the human voice could sound like that. I still am. Though if you listen carefully, they do get a little production help at times. Still, they dressed up as snowmen for the Christmas Top Of The Pops special, I’m sure, so they are good guys in my book.

Keith Bruce, arts editor

Santa Claus, Go Straight To The Ghetto by James Brown (1968)

The best of the Yuletide offerings by The Hardest Working Man In Showbiz (he did of course make an entire Christmas album - it’s compulsory for US singers).

Best lyric in it is: “Tell ‘em James Brown sent you!”

Never one to fight shy of taking a credit was old JB.

Susan Swarbrick, senior features writer

Merry Christmas Everyone by Shakin’ Stevens (1985)

It was the Christmas number one when I was eight.

My late grandmother and I loved Shaky. We would dance around her living room whenever the song came on the radio or TV. There was even a special gift under the tree: a satin cushion featuring an iron-on transfer of the double denim-clad crooner.

Whenever I hear this song I’m eight again and dancing with my gran.

Susan Swarbrick, senior features writer

Christmas Wrapping by the Waitresses (1982)

This is the festive anthem of anti-social hermits everywhere.

Sample lyrics: “It's Christmas Eve/gonna relax/turn down all of my invites.” In fact, the Spice Girls cover version (a B side to their 1998 Christmas number one Goodbye) might be better than the original... 

Teddy Jamieson, senior features writer

Merry Xmas Everybody by Slade (1973)

Music is memory. In my head Christmas comes with a Glam Rock soundtrack. Roy Wood, Mud and Slade, always Slade. It’s 1973, I’m 10, there’s a Scalextric set under the tree and the Christmas edition of Top of the Pops is on the telly.

Merry Xmas Everybody. Ruffian harmonies, dirty electric guitar, Jim Lea in the tightest of white trousers, Dave Hill with glitter in his bowl-cut hair and Noddy Holder, sideburns positively Dickensian, screaming “It’s Chriiiiiiiiistmas!” (Let’s edit out Jimmy Savile dancing in the background.)

It’s a song so engrained in me I can’t begin to be objective about it. Every time I hear it I’m back in a council house in Northern Ireland, my mum’s in the kitchen cooking, my dad’s in his chair and my sisters and I are arguing about nothing. Time travel in three verses. Repeat chorus to fade.

But now it’s 44 years later and things have changed. There’s an empty chair now and I’m in a different country. And I listen to the song and I hear that line “Look to the future/ It’s only just begun.” And I hope it’s still true.

Scott Wright, deputy business editor, and Mark Eadie, production editor

Happy Xmas (War is Over) by John Lennon (1982)

Scott: Christmas songs for me are all about nostalgia. And no song takes me back to my childhood in the 1970s and '80s more than this paean for peace by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. An anti-war protest gift-wrapped in tinsel - what's not to like?

Mark: Obvious choice, I know. A multi-millionaire singing about peace, love and harmony etc. Yes, I’ve heard it all before, but it doesn’t take away the fact it has a great melody and just kicks ass.

His use of counterpoint is very Beatley – basically two tunes (one led by Lennon, the other sung by the choir) held together in such a way that they exist separately during the verses only to meet perfectly in the chorus. Sometimes I wonder if Lennon actually understood what he was doing. Glorious stuff. Written during the height of the Vietnam War, so his heart was in the right place.

Sean Guthrie, chief content manager

The Little Drummer Boy by Low (1999)

In husband-and-wife singers Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker the Minnesota trio Low have long excelled at twin-voiced secular hymns to love, grief and parenthood.

Here they apply their strident, note-perfect talents to a staple of the 20th-century Christmas songbook over a wheezing, modulated organ. The result never ceases to move my heart.

Craig Alexander, multimedia editor, and Linda Howard, online content editor

All I Want for Christmas Is You by Mariah Carey (1994)

Craig: It's not Christmas until I hear this song.

Linda: This is a gingerbread house of a pop song, built on a gospel music foundation with a throwback to Phil Spector's wall of sound, as a sleigh-bell rhythm and countermelodies rush across the frosted rooftop and Mariah lands a thrilling G5 above middle C. 

Brian Donnelly, senior news reporter, and Mark Eadie, production editor

Stop the Cavalry by Jona Lewie (1980)

Brian: This was actually an anti-war song, but ended up a Christmas hit and compilation staple. For me it brings back warm eighties memories every time.

Mark: This reminds me of going to watch Francie and Josie in panto at the King’s in the early 80s.

The only connection being it was on the radio as we drove there – embedding a childhood memory that has always stuck. On paper the combining of a Salvation Army’s “umpa, umpa” brass band with the tinny bedroom-generated beat of an early electronic synthesiser shouldn’t work...but it just does.

The effect is surprisingly warm, slightly weird and ultimately uplifting. The only reference to Christmas is the jingling sleigh bells in the middle, which do sound a tad contrived and an excuse to market it as a Christmas song.

Phil Miller, arts correspondent

I have three favourites.

The first is Oh Holy Night, which, while a Carol (I love about 100 carols), it has also been popularised over the years by singers such as Celine Dion, Josh Groban and others. It is just a gorgeous, moving melody, written by French composer Adolphe Adam in 1847.

The second is Just Like Christmas, by the American band Low.

A sombre, stark band in general, they released the wonderful Christmas EP in 1999, and it contains this tinselly, jingling gem: it’s beautiful.

And there is Wintersong by the Canadian singer Sarah McLachlan, released in 2006.

A plangent song which beautifully sums up the bitter sweet feelings of celebrating Christmas while still mourning the loss of a loved one.

Might, perhaps, make you cry.

Finally.... there are great modern day Xmas songs.  Martin Williams' also picked a song from avant garde West Country combo Beak> called (Merry Xmas) Face The Future which has been put out for Christmas 2017.  

It strips the sentiment away completely and is just a phenomenal mix of weird skew-whiff doom-glam rock dynamics and a dollop of Trump vs Jong-un reality.  Beak> are one of the great undiscovered bands.   

Christmas really isn’t Christmas without your favourite festive feel-good song playing in the background  - which one is yours?

Tell us in the comments below.