What Will Santa Claus Say (When He Finds Everybody Swingin’) was a Swing classic by Louis Prima; I couldn’t find an exact year, but he was big in the 1930′s.
You probably know Louis Prima from his more popular film appearance:
The two sound similar enough to make me smile 
You never hear it anymore, and there’s not many covers, but I did find this one by Mark Shane:
Dig that trumpet 
Rockin Around The Christmas Tree can thusly be seen as a spiritual successor to this song; written in 1958, it’s more Rockabilly than Rock n’ Roll, but it brings a whole new genre to Christmas just like Louis did for swing. It was recorded by Brenda Lee, apparently only aged 13 at the time with a remarkably mature voice for her age:
(Knowing she’s 13, it does sound a little Jackson 5, doesn’t it?)
Here’s Miley Cyrus, age 16, probably one of the most appropriate artists to cover it shy of Taylor Swift:
Definitely more rock nowadays.
Here’s John Travolta (swoon) and Olivia Newton John:
Calypso, Swing, and Rockabilly. Any other interesting genres of “carol” I should hit?
Most of the Christmas-related songs I’ve heard from the thirties and forties are much more downbeat and consciously sentimental, so that’s a welcome change. A proper swing song, to my mind, only has vocals to keep the audience from wandering away before the band gets properly going…
Abney Park did release Dark Christmas, so that would be either goth/industrial or steampunk depending on how you classify them… and I understand they’ve just released another Christmas album.
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