The sound of Christmas: film music that brings it all back

Start a Christmas film playlist with "Somewhere in My Memory", "Walking in the Air" and "Believe": three pieces that bring the films' sense of wonder home.

A few notes can bring back a whole scene: a boy alone in an enormous house, a snowman lifting into the night sky, a train heading somewhere you badly want to believe exists.

Sometimes those notes bring back the room where you first watched the film, too.

"Somewhere in My Memory" is a good place to start. The melody holds both sides of Christmas at once: the excitement of being a child, and the ache of remembering it later.

But the sound of Christmas reaches well beyond one film. It takes in orchestral scores and songs written for the screen, old recordings given a new home, and one famous sleigh ride that found its way into our festive playlists by a surprisingly roundabout route.

Here are 12 pieces worth turning up, plus a small-screen encore. This is a listening guide, not a ranking. Start at the top, or skip to the one you already love.

1. Somewhere in My Memory: Home Alone (1990)

Music: John Williams. Lyrics: Leslie Bricusse.
For: the moment the Christmas lights go on.

It would be easy to remember Home Alone for its traps, its screams and a pair of burglars making spectacularly bad decisions. Then this music arrives, and the film suddenly feels much bigger than its comedy.

Williams gives the boy's Christmas a sense of wonder, and he leaves room for loneliness as well. That matters. The house holds everything a child could want, and the one thing missing is the family he wished away.

"Somewhere in My Memory" sits so comfortably beside much older Christmas music that you could mistake it for a carol the film borrowed. It isn't. Williams and Bricusse wrote it for Home Alone.

It is the centre of this guide: a piece that can make an ordinary room feel, briefly, like the Christmas you hoped you would have.

Listen for: the way the melody opens out when the voices join the orchestra. The warmth comes from that sense of gathering together.

2. Walking in the Air: The Snowman (1982)

Music and lyrics: Howard Blake. Original film vocal: Peter Auty.
For: looking out at the sky on Christmas Eve.

If "Somewhere in My Memory" brings us home, "Walking in the Air" takes us out through the window.

The flying sequence in The Snowman gives the music room to carry the story. Nobody needs to explain what it feels like to leave the ground. The voice and the orchestra do it.

It balances freedom and fragility. Everything seems possible, and you can also feel how short the adventure will be. That mixture is probably why it moves an adult quite differently from a child.

One detail worth getting right: Peter Auty sings in the original film. Aled Jones made the later hit recording that many listeners also know.

Listen for: how the long vocal phrases keep the journey suspended in the air.

3. Believe: The Polar Express (2004)

Written by Alan Silvestri and Glen Ballard. Performed by Josh Groban.
For: anyone trying to recover a little childhood wonder.

The Polar Express builds its Christmas around one question: what happens when you begin to lose the ability to believe?

"Believe" gives that question a song. Groban has the scale to match the film's enormous journey, but the appeal is more private than that. You can hear it as a grown-up's wish to have Christmas back with fewer doubts and distractions.

After all the movement and spectacle, it gives you a moment to sit with that feeling.

Put it after "Walking in the Air" and the two make a lovely pair. One takes flight; the other looks back at what the flight meant.

Listen for: the slow widening from a restrained opening into the full orchestra.

4. Troika: the unexpected film-music connection

Composer: Sergei Prokofiev. From the Lieutenant Kijé Suite, drawn from his music for the 1934 film.
For: the sound of a sleigh journey, even when the weather outside is drizzle.

You may know this tune without knowing its name.

"Troika" has the forward push and bright, ringing sound of a winter journey. A troika is a team of three horses, and it is easy to hear them pulling a sleigh through snow.

Its place here needs a short explanation. Lieutenant Kijé is not a Christmas film. Prokofiev's music found a festive life well beyond its original story, and Greg Lake borrowed the "Troika" melody for "I Believe in Father Christmas". It does not appear in Home Alone, either, though it sits happily on the same playlist.

So it is a detour, and a good one. It shows how a piece of music can travel from a cinema to the concert hall, into a pop record, and finally into somebody's private idea of what December sounds like.

If this is the tune you have been trying to name for years, there is a particular pleasure in finally pinning it down.

Listen for: the steady travelling rhythm under the melody.

Read Classic FM on "Troika" and the Greg Lake connection

5. White Christmas: Holiday Inn (1942) and White Christmas (1954)

Written by Irving Berlin. Closely associated with Bing Crosby.
For: old-fashioned Christmas longing.

A small piece of film history first: "White Christmas" appeared on screen in Holiday Inn 12 years before the film that took its name.

That is easy to forget, because the song, Crosby and the musical White Christmas feel so tightly bound together. The earlier screen appearance is a reminder of how much our Christmas soundtrack owes to the cinema.

The song does not need an elaborate arrangement. Much of its appeal is the space it leaves around the idea of a remembered Christmas. Snow becomes a way of imagining somewhere familiar and peaceful, and just out of reach.

After the big modern scores, it changes the scale of the playlist. You lean in.

Listen for: Crosby's conversational ease. He makes a hugely familiar song feel like something being shared with you.

Read the Irving Berlin estate on the song's screen history

6. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas: Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

Written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane. Performed in the film by Judy Garland.
For: the quieter, more complicated side of Christmas.

Christmas music can wear you out when it insists that everybody is having a wonderful time.

Judy Garland's performance leaves room for something else. In Meet Me in St. Louis, the song offers comfort to a family facing a move nobody wants. The hope means something because the happiness is uncertain.

The film runs through all four seasons, not only Christmas, but this scene has given it a lasting place in festive viewing.

Hear Garland after a run of cheerful standards and you may notice how little force she needs. The feeling is all in the tenderness. Christmas can be lovely and difficult in the same evening, and this song understands that.

Listen for: the gentleness of the reassurance.

7. It Feels Like Christmas: The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)

Songwriter: Paul Williams. Sung by the Ghost of Christmas Present.
For: remembering what all the effort is supposed to be for.

The Ghost of Christmas Present makes an excellent host for this song: generous, welcoming and thoroughly delighted to show the old miser what he has been missing.

Paul Williams gives the number a warmth that looks outwards. Christmas lives in people spending time together, making room for one another and noticing small pleasures.

That is why it earns a place beside the more wistful pieces here. Sometimes the right answer to a gloomy December evening is a song with a big, open-hearted welcome.

A useful credit to get straight: Williams wrote the songs for The Muppet Christmas Carol, and Miles Goodman composed its original score. Both give the film its musical personality.

Listen for: the buoyant rhythm that makes the whole scene feel like an invitation.

8. What's This?: The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

Written and sung by Danny Elfman.
For: seeing Christmas as if you had never met it before.

In The Nightmare Before Christmas, a skeleton who runs Halloween stumbles into a town where it is always Christmas, and a songwriter could not ask for a better gift.

Snow, lights and baffling customs arrive in a rush. Elfman turns that rush into music that will not sit still, because the singer cannot stop noticing things.

Somewhere under the theatrical excitement is a useful reminder. Familiarity makes it easy to stop seeing the things that once fascinated us. Seen through a newcomer's eyes, a decorated tree becomes astonishing again.

This is the liveliest kind of Christmas wonder: bewildered, and desperate to investigate.

Listen for: how quickly one musical idea gives way to the next, keeping pace with a mind that cannot settle.

9. Glasgow Love Theme: Love Actually (2003)

Composer: Craig Armstrong.
For: a Christmas evening when you would rather have piano than a singalong.

Love Actually has plenty of memorable songs. Its quieter music is worth seeking out as well.

"Glasgow Love Theme" is a good place to begin. It carries the hesitant, exposed feeling of wanting something you cannot simply ask for. Heard away from the film, it becomes a small pause in a season that rarely allows many.

Christmas does not have to be announced by sleigh bells. Sometimes the film supplies the association, and the music brings back the atmosphere without a single festive sound.

If this turns out to be your favourite part of the guide, the rest of Armstrong's score is worth exploring, "Portuguese Love Theme" especially.

Listen for: the space around the piano melody.

Explore the score on Craig Armstrong's website

10. Maestro: The Holiday (2006)

Composer: Hans Zimmer.
For: the cosy romantic-film corner of your playlist.

"Maestro" belongs to the warmer, lighter side of Zimmer's film music.

It suits anyone who loves the atmosphere of The Holiday: some wistfulness, and the feeling that life might still take a welcome turn.

This is where an instrumental Christmas playlist earns its keep. You get the connection to a favourite festive film while you read, cook or wrap presents, and nothing asks you to sing the chorus.

Try it next to Armstrong. Both belong to Christmas viewing, and both leave room for romance and reflection beyond the season.

Listen for: the move from delicate passages into a broader, sweeping sound.

Listen to The Holiday soundtrack on Spotify

11. Pennies from Heaven: Elf (2003)

Written by Arthur Johnston and Johnny Burke. Recording performed by Louis Prima.
For: a burst of elf-sized enthusiasm.

A Christmas film can make a song feel festive even when the song has nothing to do with Christmas.

Louis Prima's "Pennies from Heaven", on the Elf soundtrack, is a perfect example. Its cheerful bounce matches a hero who meets New York with an enormous appetite for enjoyment.

After the yearning elsewhere in this guide, it is a welcome change of pace. There is room for music that gets you moving round the kitchen as well as music that has you staring thoughtfully out of a window.

It also shows why a film's choice of songs deserves as much attention as its score. Picking an existing recording can say just as much as writing a new one.

Listen for: Prima's playful delivery and the record's irresistible swing.

Explore the official Elf soundtrack from WaterTower Music

12. Carol of the Bells: Home Alone (1990)

Music from Mykola Leontovych's "Shchedryk"; English words by Peter J. Wilhousky. Featured on the Home Alone soundtrack.
For: the point where festive sparkle turns deliciously dramatic.

Back to Home Alone, with a very different feeling.

Where "Somewhere in My Memory" offers warmth, "Carol of the Bells" has momentum. Its repeating figure sounds bright, urgent and slightly ominous all at once. It is Christmas music with somewhere to be.

This is an older piece the film uses, not another John Williams original. Soundtrack listings blur that by putting the recording under his name.

Play the two Home Alone choices back to back. Together they show how much range one film's idea of Christmas can hold.

Listen for: the insistent repeating pattern, and how the voices around it build the tension.

A small-screen encore: Christmas Time Is Here

From A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965), a television special. Music by Vince Guaraldi; lyrics by Lee Mendelson.

One television guest deserves a seat at this table.

"Christmas Time Is Here" sounds like nothing else in the guide: gentle jazz at an unhurried pace, with a little melancholy under the sweetness.

Both the vocal and instrumental recordings are worth hearing. The vocal version belongs to the world of the special; the instrumental lets the tune settle into the background of your own evening.

After the choirs, orchestras and big musical numbers, it is a lovely place to finish.

Make it your Christmas soundtrack

You do not have to listen in order. Choose the evening you want.

Or try a small experiment. Next time you put on a familiar Christmas film, give the music a bit more attention. Notice what happens before anyone speaks, or how a tune changes when it comes back.

You may find that part of the scene you have loved for years was in the soundtrack all along.

Prefer the records film-makers borrowed rather than wrote? Our companion guide, Christmas hits in Christmas films, follows 12 familiar songs back to the scenes they now belong to.

Which piece of film music makes Christmas begin for you?