The holiday season is a time of joy and togetherness for many people. However, not everyone has a holly-jolly time when the holiday season comes around. For one reason or another, it’s the hardest time of year for some people. For those who are having a hard time this Christmas season or those who just enjoy sad country songs, these tunes are for you.
Let’s hit pause on “Jingle Bell Rock” and “Deck the Halls” for a moment to appreciate the sadness of the season. Here are four sad country Christmas songs that will leave you weeping under the tree.
“Hard Candy Christmas” by Dolly Parton
Written by Carol Hall for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Dolly Parton’s “Hard Candy Christmas” is a staple of the holiday season. This sad country song captures the spirit of barely getting by—both financially and mentally—during the Christmas season.
The song’s title refers to a time when families could only afford to give their children inexpensive hard candy or penny candy on Christmas morning. At the same time, the verses see the narrator looking at different ways to improve their position in life in the shadow of the holiday season.
“Hard Candy Christmas” isn’t all about being downtrodden during the holidays, though. There’s an element of hope in the lyrics. At the same time, it carries the message that life can be hard and sweet at the same time. One only needs to find the silver linings in life.
“Lonely Christmas Call” by George Jones
George Jones is a master of sad country songs and “Lonely Christmas Call” is no exception. Jones co-wrote this song with George Riddle and released it as a single backed with “My Mom and Santa Claus” in 1962.
Jones sings “Lonely Christmas Call” from the perspective of a single father who is imploring his estranged wife to come home. However, he’s not looking to rekindle their relationship. There’s no real mention of the former lovers mending fences in the song. Instead, he’s pleading with her to come see her children on Christmas and give them the gift of a mother’s love.
“It Won’t Be the Same This Year” by Vince Gill
Vince Gill wrote this sad country song and included it on his 1993 Christmas album Let There Be Peace on Earth. “It Won’t Be the Same This Year” is, at the same time, a beautiful song and hard to listen to.
Gill famously finished “Go Rest High on That Mountain” after his older half-brother Bob Coen died of a heart attack in 1993. His passing also inspired Gill to pen this heartbreaking Christmas song. As one would imagine, “It Won’t Be the Same This Year” sees the singer/songwriter working through his emotions during his first Christmas season without his brother.
“Christmas Makes Me Cry” by Kacey Musgraves
Kacey Musgraves co-wrote this song with Shane McAnally and Brandy Clark for her 2016 album A Very Kacey Christmas. “Christmas Makes Me Cry” sees Musgraves singing about how hard the holiday season can be for those who are missing loved ones.
She explained the meaning behind the song while introducing it during her 2019 Christmas special. “It feels like we are supposed to be happy during the holidays. But sometimes they just make you really sad,” she said. “So, I wrote this song for anybody that might be feeling a little bit lonely.”
A must to avoid
Any stray twist of the radio dial, any trip to the dentist’s office, could spell disaster. And heaven help you if the 2019 movie “Last Christmas” comes on TV. Losers who get “whammed” are encouraged to ‘fess up on social media, and retire from the game. As if the holidays weren’t stressful enough!
“I was officially Whammed today at approximately 3:00pm EST while wrapping presents listening to Christmas music,” posted one victim, on Facebook, on Dec. 1.
“And I’m out already. Thanks United Airlines… they’re playing our song while boarding,” posted another, on Dec. 2.
That’s nothing. Last December, a DJ in Northampton, U.K., deliberately played the song to 7,215 people in a football stadium. Matt Facer, known as “DJ Matty,” had to formally apologize to the angry crowd for whamming them en masse.
“I gave it a spin, thinking it would be quite funny to wipe out 7,000 people who couldn’t avoid it, but clearly it isn’t funny,” he said.
In doing so, Facer violated Whamageddon Rule No. 6. Whamageddon, according to the official website — yes, it has one — is a “survival game,” not a “battle royal.” To deliberately sabotage someone else’s game isn’t cricket. “Don’t be a dick, mkay?” they advise.
American roots, Danish descent
This unusual holiday pastime seems to have evolved from “The Little Drummer Boy Challenge,” which emerged from Northern California in the mid-’90s. That one was even tougher — listeners had to go a full month, from Thanksgiving to Christmas, without hearing the hated “Pa-Rum-Pa-Pa-Pum.”
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Credit four Danish friends, Thomas Mertz, Rasmus Leth Bjerre, Oliver Nøglebæk, and Søren Gelineck, for developing Whamageddon two decades back, in collective exasperation at hearing George Michael pipe, for the millionth time, “Last Christmas, I gave you my heart, But the very next day you gave it away…”
For many years, “Last Christmas” held the record for the highest selling single never to top the charts (1.9 million copies, not counting streams). And then finally, on New Year’s Day, 2021, it did top the UK Singles Chart.
No wonder avoiding it has become a game. One that took off internationally, when the creators established a Facebook page in 2016.
Whamageddon is now, without a doubt, the biggest Danish holiday export since cookie tins.
“We kind of realized this song was being played constantly, over and over,” Mertz told CBS in 2023. “It was just in really heavy rotation. And instead of getting annoyed with it, we decided to make a game out of it and have a little bit of fun.”
Like the song? Here’s a workaround
But what if you like “Last Christmas”? What if winning the game means losing a cherished part of your holiday?
Well, never fear. There are two hacks.
One is a variation of Whamageddon, called Wham!Hunter — in which you get points for hearing the song.
