'This Christmas': How a Chicago postal worker and Donny Hathaway created a holiday classic

There is a moment every Christmas season when Donny Hathaway's "This Christmas" brings water to my eyes.

It doesn't happen with the Chris Brown version (though many a millennial will insist, disturbingly, that it's the definitive version). And have you ever heard the John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John cover? It generates tears for other reasons. But on the Emotional Resonance Holiday Scale, the Hathaway original lands a singular blow. It's almost stealthy in its effect. For years I didn't see this coming, now I see it's inevitable: Late in the season, long after exhaustion has set in, just as I'm convinced Christmas is no longer worth the hassle, "This Christmas" seems to waft from the walls.

The rest is clockwork.

A surge of strings, a blast of horns, Hathaway's honeyed delivery:

"And THIS! CHRIST! MAS! / Will be! / A very special CHRIST! MAS!

For me-eeeeee, YEAH!"

Cue the waterworks. When it's over, I often sit back and say out loud like a crazy person: "The best Christmas song." Not "White Christmas," not "Blue Christmas." THIS! CHRIST! MAS!

Apologies for interrupting your holiday, but somebody needs to address this. In fact, Chicago-based music writer Aaron Cohen, finishing up a social history of soul music in Chicago (out in 2018 from the University of Chicago Press), told me, "Well, actually, I consider it the first great Christmas song."

Lawrence Ware, co-director of the Center for Africana Studies at Oklahoma State University, who recently listened to "This Christmas" and its cover versions for 48-straight hours for a Slate story,