A guide to the food & drink mentioned in holiday songs & carols

When Maria from the musical “The Sound of Music” is feeling down, she reminds herself of her favorite things, which include “Cream-colored ponies and crisp apple strudels / Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles.” So this is technically a two-for, as it mentions both the apple-stuffed pastry and the thin, breaded pork cutlet dish native to Central Europe.

There are actually several foods mentioned in the song “You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch,” from the 1966 animated short “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” but none of them are holiday-related, and all of them are used to insult the titular character. The Grinch is described as “a bad banana with a greasy black peel,” having garlic in his soul and a dead tomato for a heart, and being “a three-decker sauerkraut and toadstool sandwich...with arsenic sauce.” Look, we know the guy’s a little grumpy, but this all seems a bit much.

In the Beach Boys Christmas diddy “Little Saint Nick,” the boys aren’t actually talking about candy apples. Instead, they’re referring to Santa’s sled as being “candy apple red with a ski for a wheel.” We’re going to count it anyway.

One of the signs that Christmas is coming? You see candy canes. It’s right in the first verse of “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” the song made famous by Perry Como, Bing Crosby, and, more recently, Michael Bublé. 

“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire” are the famous opening lines of “The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas to You),” which was first recorded by the Nat King Cole Trio in 1946. Remember, if you’re roasting chestnuts—in the oven or over an open fire—you’ll first want to score an “X” in them with a knife so they don’t explode.

There’s a whole lot of food in the lyrics to Run-DMC’s “Christmas in Hollis,” and it’s all in one verse. “It's Christmas time in Hollis, Queens / Mom's cooking chicken and collard greens / Rice and stuffing, macaroni and cheese / And Santa put gifts under Christmas trees.” In case you’re counting, that’s five different dishes!

The orchestral holiday tune “Sleigh Ride” mentions that “[t]here’s a happy feeling nothing in the world can buy,” and that’s the serving of coffee and dessert. We’ll get to which dessert that is later, as it’s also mentioned in two other songs, but hold on a second… How can that feeling not be bought, when coffee and dessert are both available for purchase at the grocery store?

Frosty the Snowman is described as having “a corncob pipe and a button nose, and two eyes made out of coal.” Corn cob pipes are made from actual corn cobs, which take two years to dry before they can be covered in plaster/lacquer/varnish and then used.

Poor Grandma. She got drunk on eggnog, realized she forgot her meds and had to stumble home on Christmas Eve—only to be run down by a reindeer, which was likely in the middle of delivering gifts and probably didn’t have insurance. So is the tragic tale of “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer,” which actually has a surprisingly upbeat tone.

“Bring us some figgy pudding” is a well-known line from the holiday classic “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” But if someone showed up at the door of the average person and said, “Oh, bring us some figgy pudding,” “We won’t go until we get some,” and “We all like our figgy pudding,” the homeowner wouldn’t know what to do—because what the heck is figgy pudding? Well, for starters, it’s not pudding in the American sense. Instead, it’s the British version that’s a steamed, cake-like dessert made with suet, eggs, breadcrumbs, brown sugar, dried fruit, and brandy.

Speaking of demanding holiday songs, “We Need a Little Christmas” is next on this list. The song, which is clearly about someone decorating for Christmas way too early (you gotta think it takes place sometime shortly after Halloween), instructs the listener to “cut up the fruitcake.” There are several questionable instructions in the lyrics, but the most dangerous one is not about eating fruitcake—it’s the line that says “climb down the chimney.”

“Christmas is Coming” actually originated as a simple, four-line nursery rhyme, but several musical versions have been recorded by the likes of the Kingston Trio, Bing Crosby, and, of course, John Denver and the Muppets. The first line of the original rhyme is “Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat / Please put a penny in the old man’s hat,” or alternately, “the goose is getting fat.”

We don’t think Hanukkah has nearly enough popular songs, but at least the few famous ones are generally fun. “Oh Hanukkah” (also known as “Hanukkah, Oh Hanukkah”) mentions the menorah, the horah, parties, and “dreidels to play with and latkes to eat.” “Sivivon,” the Hebrew word for “dreidel” or “thing that turns,” may be used instead.

We definitely agree that the holiday season is the most wonderful time of the year, but we have to admit we’ve never roasted marshmallows on Christmas before, even though “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” specifically refers to “parties for hosting, marshmallows for toasting.” Then again, we do toast marshmallows when they’re on top of our sweet potato casserole, so maybe the song is relatable after all.

We guess you could argue there are multiple edible things in the classic holiday tune “Twelve Days of Christmas.” This includes geese, hens, partridges, and even the milk milked by the maids, but it’s unclear if all the birds are meant to be used as food because that would require a lot of storage and butchering responsibilities. Instead, we’re going with the pear tree, because it’s full of fruit you can just pick and eat.

The very beginning of “Let It Snow”—covered by crooners Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin—says, “It doesn't show signs of stopping / And I've brought some corn for popping / The lights are turned way down low / Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.” We love our popcorn, so that’s enough of a reason to stay out of the cold.

Pumpkin pie is a popular holiday dish to serve, eat, and include in songs. “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” mentions that “Later we'll have some pumpkin pie / And we’ll do some caroling.” “There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays” talks about meeting a Pennsylvania-bound man seeking the dessert. And pumpkin pie is also the aforementioned dessert we referred to being served in “Sleigh Ride” alongside coffee.

The Prince of Parody, “Weird Al” Yankovic, has a couple of hilarious Christmas songs, although neither of them are actually spoofs. One of the original tunes is “The Night Santa Went Crazy,” which is a lighthearted narrative about Santa getting fed up with his job, bombing the workshop, taking the elves hostage, and grinding up “poor Rudolph into reindeer sausage.” Merry Christmas!

There’s no speaking or singing in “The Nutcracker” ballet, but there are songs with titles, and one of those titles, “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,” mentions a food. If you don’t want to count that, then we’ll point out that “Christmas with the Devil” by Spinal Tap features the lines: “The elves are dressed in leather / And the angels are in chains / The sugar plums are rancid /And the stockings are in flames.” Happy now?

If you don’t recognize “Cool Yule” from its title, you might know it as the Louis Armstrong song that plays at the beginning and end of the 2001 Christmas rom-com“Serendipity.” Artists who have also sung the line “When all you cats are sleepin' warm as toast” are Bette Midler and the Brian Setzer Orchestra.

Wassail is a hot, mulled cider, and wassailing is a superstitious English tradition of going door-to-door while singing and trading wassail for gifts to promote a good season for the apple trees. It’s basically the Yuletide precursor to caroling, but with apple-booze. If you’ve ever heard the song “Here We Come A-Wassailing,” you’ve already got the gist of it.

One of the cheeriest holiday songs is “Marshmallow World,” a little ditty about how pretty everything looks when covered in snow. “It's time for play, it's a whipped cream day” has been sung by everyone from Johnny Mathis and Dean Martin to Garth Brooks & Trisha Yearwood, She & Him, and Seth MacFarlane. 

Written in the 1850s and based on a historical figure who lived nearly 1,000 years prior, “Good King Wenceslas” has a verse that begins “Bring me flesh, and bring me wine / Bring me pine logs hither / Thou and I shall see him dine / When we bear them thither.” Although it is a Christmas carol, the song actually takes place on the Feast of Saint Stephen, which is December 26, also traditionally known as “The Second Day of Christmas.”