I found The Most Hated Christmas Songs of All Time here and The 20 Worst Christmas Songs of All Time here. Some of them I don’t know, and you really need to know songs for them to be despised tunes, don’t you think?
Wonderful Christmastime – Paul McCartney. I’ve heard some very decent covers of this song. The song isn’t bad. This recording?
Do They Know It’s Christmas? – Band Aid. When Bob Geldof called it one of the “worst songs in history,” that says a lot. Pretentious and condescending, but its heart was in the right place.
The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late) – Alvin and the Chipmunks. When I was growing up, my parents had this single. It’s nostalgic for me.
I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus – The Jackson 5. It’s corny, especially when Michael says, “I’m going to tell my daddy!”
Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer – Elmo and Patsy. OK, I’ll admit it; I BOUGHT this single in the early 1980s. Not incidentally, the version that I heard on the radio was rerecorded.
All I Want For Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth) – Spike Jones and His City Slickers. OK, so it’s annoying, but Spike Jones often is.
River horse
I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas – Gayla Peevey. I never heard of this song until Mark Evanier posted it on Christmas Eve 2017. For a ten-year-old, she has impressive pipes.
Baby, It’s Cold Outside – She and Him. The critic finds this version “overwhelmingly twee,” whatever that means. Of course, the song generally has become controversial.
Back Door Santa – Bon Jovi. One of two songs on that original A Very Special Christmas (1987) I don’t particularly enjoy.
Here is another song I imagine some people will hate. Santa’s Too Fat For The Hula Hoop – The Pixies with Thurl Ravenscroft as Santa Claus (c 1958).
Now there is a track on both lists I hate SO much that I won’t even link to it. That would be Dominick the Donkey by Lou Monte. I thought it was a fairly recent song, but no. It was recorded in 1960. But I only heard it this century.
“The song was re-released onto Amazon on September 26, 2011, on Dexterity Records. The spelling of ‘Dominick’ was modified to ‘Dominic’… It was included in Volume 2 of the Ultimate Christmas Album series produced by Collectables Records and on the Christmas compilation album Merry Xmas 2011 by Cinquenta Musica.”
I mostly agree.
I remember I once heard an instrumental arrangement of the infamous Chipmunk Song where it was played as a light waltz and it was actually very pleasant. (I don’t HATE the Chipmunk Song, it’s just one you can hear once a year and be good with, hearing it many times is not good)
There are some versions of Little Drummer Boy that are so treacly-slow I can’t stand ’em. Also the one I call the Jesus Shoes song, where a boy buys his dying mom nice shoes so she can “meet Jesus in nice shoes” which is bad theology on several levels, and also one of those songs that seems to cynically pull on your heartstrings.
A lot of people have expressed hate for the Mariah Carey “All I Want for Christmas is You” but I hear it more as a loving tribute to the Motown Christmas songs of the 60s, and I enjoy it. (It can and is overplayed, though)