For most people, hearing “Christmas Songs” and “‘90s” in the same sentence together means one thing and one thing only: Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You”. And yeah, that song is a total juggernaut of a festive musical treat (d’uh!), but it isn’t the absolute of all ’90s Christmas hits. As any ’90s kid will tell you, we were spoiled for choice when it came to Christmas music back then. The obligatory Christmas album or song was the benchmark for pop bands to truly declare to the world that they were were somebody in music and as such these musical moments have become our own benchmarks for nostalgia.
The problem is though, unless you were a kid during the ’90s then the odds are pretty limited that you’re going to even know that half of these songs even exist, never mind actually enjoy them. Not every song can measure up to Mariah, but that doesn’t make them any less important to the Christmas experience. Here are 13 of those songs that only ’90s kids could love.
4. Hanson — “Everybody Knows The Claus”
From Snowed In, an album which my family probably remembers as torturing them with incessantly repeated plays throughout the Christmas of ’97, Hanson’s “Everybody Knows The Claus” feels like a song that you already knew long before they sang it, except it’s actually one of their own original compositions, which is pretty impressive. Listen back and relive that massive crush you once held for Taylor Hanson.