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BBC Showtime Special Xmas Special December Will Be Magic Again (single)

With “December Will Be Magic Again,” we’re in considerably less seriously territory. As a one-off Christmas single with no attachment to an album, it dallies in its own winter wonderland, willfully free of responsibility to Kate Bush’s contemporary work. When singers do Christmas songs, they’re willfully partaking in a tradition of cheerful odes to Yuletide (with some notable exceptions). “December Will Be Magic Again” is one of these songs, abdicating its status as a contemporary of Never for Ever in favor of filling the Christmas single slot. Yet Bush couldn’t settle for even her Christmas fluff being drab traditionalism, and fucked around with it a bit.

Unusually for Bush but par for the course in Christmas music, “December” is latently nostalgic. From the “again” in its title to its dwelling on childhood images, the song goes to great lengths to reconstruct childhood memories of Christmas. Bush settles into the falsetto end of her vocal range, singing lots of high notes with a wonder usually only prepubescents can manage. Bush has exactly the sort of voice which makes lyrics like “take a husky to the ice/while Bing Crosby sings “White Christmas”/he makes you feel nice” sound not less patently goofy, but at least more intuitive.  

The song is embellished with twinkles of Bush’s childhood as she writes what’s clearly an exercise in rebuilding her childhood. Bush has a refreshing tendency to lean on her own interests in her songwriting, which liberates “December” from feeling too commercial. There are the obvious references to staples of Christmastime like Santa Claus (tell me he’s called “Father Christmas” and I’ll break your legs) and kissing under the mistletoe, but they’re balanced by moments like, say, Oscar Wilde showing up: “light the candle lights/to conjure Mr. Wilde/ooh, it’s quiet inside/here in Oscar’s mind.” It’s a bit like having, say, Wham! sing about George Bernard Shaw. The reference is clunky, with two uses of “light” in a single clause accompanied by some strange stuff about dwelling in the head of Oscar Wilde. Yet it’s an oddly poignant choice of creative minds to dive into: Wilde’s idiosyncratic wit often responded to darkness in his personal life. As a queer man in Victorian England, being a noticeably brilliant individual was diminished by being pegged as subhuman for your sexual orientation. True recognition comes later when millions of people read your work, including a little The Happy Prince fan called Catherine Bush. 

Yet despite its touching on a complex character like Wilde, “December Will Be Magic Again” doesn’t have a lot of meat on its bones. With its fixation on Bush’s nostalgic treasures, it has little to say beyond “isn’t Christmas neat?” The song expresses this in an offbeat way in how it often dances around Christmas and focuses more on December’s atmosphere and snow “come to cover the dark up,” but it’s still just a reasonably fun Christmas song. Bush seems to think more of it, however, as she recorded a number of different versions of the song. “December” made its debut in, of course, a 1979 BBC program embarrassingly called the Christmas Snowtime Special, featuring songs by ABBA, Boney M, and Bonnie Tyler. This version of the song proves counterintuitive, as in addition to its standard Christmas bells it has drummer Preston Heyman playing bongos. It’s a conga-inflected recording like “Room for the Life,” which is… not what you’d expect a song boasting lyrics about Bing Crosby and Oscar Wilde. Even stranger is the song’s accompanying video, with an obviously stoned Bush wearing red pajamas whirling around in a red armchair and relishing whatever strain Santa has brought for her. By far the most extravagant video of the song, it’s an underrated classic of Bush’s videography that should be taught in every film studies class. 

The next TV performance of the song appeared in the “Kate” special, and is by far its more minimalist production. There’s a simple setup of Bush at the piano with Kevin McAlea playing keyboards behind her, while Preston Heyman rings small bells during the chorus. Stripped of its artifice, “December” is a pleasantly quiet little tune, placing Bush’s vocals and melody at its center. Admittedly this was the “December Will Be Magic Again” I knew before writing this blog post, and its inobtrusiveness makes it the preferable recording for me. Bush’s strengths often lie in maximalism (wait until we get to “Breathing” or “Waking the Witch”), but working as an acoustic artist lets her shine as a singer-pianist as well. 

Finally there’s the single version of the song that made it to #29, and it gets the final say on how this song gets read. Released two months after Never for Ever, it’s a standalone single that clearly wants to fill the “Wuthering Heights” and “Wow” archetype. Never for Ever is decidedly less a pop record than its predecessors, and pointedly lacks a sweeping dramatic single about the power of youthful precocity. Releasing a nostalgic paean like “December Will Be Magic Again” in its wake is an odd move, one that feels like Bush is pushing against the current trajectory of her songwriting in order to revive a song that debuted before “Babooshka.” That’s understandable — serious artists get to do silly holiday anthems as well. The problem with the single recording of “December Will Be Magic Again” is that it’s convinced the song merits the same seriousness as “Wuthering Heights” and “Wow.” It’s overproduced to hell, sounding more like a Phil Collins track than a Christmas ballad with its slow, powerful drumming, soaring guitar solos, and oversignified backing vocals from Bush. What had previously been played as a decidedly sweet and simple number for a Christmas special was now the stuff of overwrought 80s singles. It’s much easier to imagine this song working as a quiet piano-driven B-side for, say, “Army Dreamers,” which already had “Passing Through Air” for backmatter. The single is mistimed, needing to be set back a year or so for it to work.

Yet with “December Will Be Magic Again,” we see the end of a certain kind of Bush song. It’s her last track that can be feasibly reimagined as hailing from her pre-Kick Inside years, with its relish for childhood delights and simple attributes of a domestic environment. That approach has reached a breaking point. From now on her quiet songs will be more adult and introspective. She’s going to do silly songs in the future, of course — but even the silly stuff often carries weight. For its shortcomings, “December Will Be Magic Again” signals the end of Bush as prodigy as she moves into the era of the Fairlight, global conflict, and Peter Gabriel. Farewell, last of the Phoenix tradition. You’ve carried us far. 

Recorded at London AIR Studios in 1979. Performed on 22 December for BBC Snowtime Special and 28 December for “Kate” special. Released as a single on 17 November 1980.