Taylor Swift famously grew up on a Christmas tree farm in Reading, PA. Back in 2009 while promoting her second-album Fearless, she talked to Jimmy Fallon about her time living there.
“It wasn’t my job to cut them down, because I was like five. They put me to work though. There are these bugs called Praying Mantises. They lay eggs and they form pods on the Douglas Fir Christmas trees. It’s their favorite tree to infest,” she explained. “I would walk around the Christmas trees all day and pick them off and put them in a little basket.”
But her devotion to the holiday goes beyond her Entomological efforts as a child. Following her 2006 self-titled debut, Swift released The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection EP in 2007 that contains six cuts – four covers and two original offerings, “Christmases When You Were Mine” and “Christmas Must Be Something More.”
Since then, she’s written one more explicitly festive song – 2019’s “Christmas Tree Farm” – and one that has found its way into the Swiftian zeitgeist as a yuletide track. (“‘tis the damn season’ from evermore.)
(With apologies to “I Look in People’s Windows” from The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology, “right where you left me” from evermore deluxe, “Lover,” “Begin Again” and “The Moment I Knew,” the latter two from Red, which all mention the holiday, but don’t necessarily evoke the spirit enough for a seasonal rotation. And while many believe that the sparkling “Opalite” feels Christmassy, it’s not included here either.)
Scroll below for all of Swift’s Christmas songs, ranked. (And check out our rankings of her title tracks, her self-directed music videos, as well as her biggest Billboard hits.)
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“Silent Night”
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}Swift arranged this countrified interpretation of the 1818 Franz Xaver Gruber carol for the EP.
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“Christmas Must Be Something More”
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}Remembering what the holiday actually represents, Swift offers a sincere vision of celebration, which she wrote by herself.
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“Santa Baby”
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}In this perfectly pleasant and peppy cover, the then-teenager takes on Eartha Kitt’s sultry classic.
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“Last Christmas”
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}Turning Wham!’s perennial hit into a cute, country-rock twanger, Swift gives a sweet rendition of the synth-pop heartbreaker.
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“Christmases When You Were Mine”
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}Her signature storytelling gets gift-wrapped in the memories of holidays past. “I’ve been doing fine without you, really / Up until the nights got cold / And everybody’s here, except you, baby / Seems like everyone’s got someone to hold,” she sings on the sentimental track.
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“Christmas Tree Farm”
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}The singer-songwriter dreams of escaping to warm cozy nights by the fire to take refuge in the joyful festivities of the season with a special someone by her side in the bubbly and jolly 2019 single.
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“‘tis the damn season”
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}Find the 21st century answer to Joni Mitchell’s “River” in the fourth track from Swift’s 2020 album evermore where she invokes the nostalgia of returning home during the holidays to engage with the past, wondering what could have been. “We could call it even / You could call me babe for the weekend / ‘Tis the damn season, write this down / I’m stayin’ at my parents’ house / And the road not taken looks real good now,” she sings on the bittersweet tune.
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