Content

• Background
• Recording 
• Release and Reception
• Concept
• Artwork
• Trivia

Background

The band has always threatened to release a Christmas album. In 1993, the band released a live version of “Silent Night” (recorded at the 1993 KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas) to an Atlantic promotional compilation titled “So This Is Christmas.” ^[1]

In 1997, the band recorded three songs: “Leon” (their version of “The First Noel,”) “God Rest Ye Jerry Mentleman” (their version of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,”) and “Joy to the World” to a Bad Religion promotional “Holiday Sampler” sent to radio stations in December of 1997. ^{[2] [3]} 

Recording 

The album was recorded in late 2011, while the band was recording the cover of Bob Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.” ^[4] It was recorded at Joe Baresi’s House of Compression. Baresi handled recording and mixing. The album was produced by Greg, Brett and Baresi.^[5]

Release and Reception

The album was announced on October 21, 2013. It was accompanied by a digital version of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” ^[6]

The album was released on October 29th, 2013 on CD, LP, and digital through Epitaph.^[7]

It peaked at number 101 on the Billboard 200 and at number 7 on Billboard’s “Top Holiday Albums” in the United States. 

Concept

Graffin: “…the songs are played in the style of punk rock. Maybe punk rock has become so respectable now that no one would bat an eyelash to hear a traditional Christmas song played in the punk style. But, part of the intention is that should be a jarring thing for the listener to hear. I think people like you and me, people who listen to Bad Religion songs, or to Slayer, or to Converge, it’s pretty palatable music. But, maybe for the local pastor or someone like that, maybe someone might raise an eyebrow.”

Gurewitz: “The band's name is Bad Religion and we have a long history of questioning religion and social norms and being skeptics and so forth. So we thought that that would make it a really fun thing to do.”

Graffin: “I think that all of these songs are secular. Even though they have their roots in the pulpit or in the church setting, virtually everyone who celebrates Christmas has heard these songs. And so, it's not Bad Religion that has made them ironic. It's kind of a secular society that's made Christmas ironic.”^[8]

Artwork

The artwork on the album is titled, "New Shoes," taken by Gerald Waller of Austria in 1946. It depicts an orphan receiving a pair of shoes after World War II. ^[9]

Trivia

Christmas Songs marks the appearance of Andy Wallace’s version of “American Jesus.” Apparently, Brett found it. 

Brett:

“Stranger Than Fiction was the first record where we ever hired an outside producer, the legendary and talented Andy Wallace. Andy is probably best known for doing Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’, which at the time of Stranger Than Fiction had just come out a little while before. He’d also just completed a huge Rage Against The Machine record; he was on fire. But the thing about Andy Wallace was that, you know, he wasn’t just some young upstart producer. I mean, going way back, he had worked Donna Sommers and Madonna and he’d done every kind of music that you can imagine. He was actually sort of an older gentleman, he wasn’t a kid our age, so we really looked up to him and we felt that he was somebody we could let produce us. The way it came about was, Andy’s manager reached out to us and said, ‘Hey, Andy likes you guys, would you like us to try out a mix. And if you like what Andy does, maybe you’d want him to hire to produce you’. And we were on tour at the time, so we arranged to have the multi-tracks of American Jesus send to him. And he quickly did a mix and sent that back to us. In those days it wasn’t possible to just send links, I think he actually had to send a burn, which we listened to on the bus, and it sounded phenomenal. And in fact, I would kill to get a copy of that nowadays, ‘cause I don’t have any idea whatever happened to that. But it wasn’t on the record, it was just a test mix to show what he could do with our stuff. It sounded phenomenal, and God, I wish I still had a copy of that.”^[10] 

References