Okay, so tonight’s earworm isn’t technically a holiday song, but hear me out. Everyone needs a little break from Christmas music now and then, even the most devoted fans of it. The song I’m posting tonight — and in fact the entire album this song comes from — actually does mean Christmas to me, because my aunt gave me this album on cassette for Christmas when I was in eleventh grade, and it was one of my very favorite gifts that year. I listened to it nonstop that winter — as I am wont to do with music I love — and so this song, the title track, has been lodged in my brain for the last few decades as a Christmas song, even though it’s technically not one.

I’m not really into crooners, in general, I have to admit. I grew up listening to the original Big Bands and do like Big Band music. In my twenties, swing dancing was my favorite hobby. But the only song I can listen to with Michael Bublé in it is “The Elf’s Lament” by Barenaked Ladies, and I’m about done with Dean Martin and his whole rat pack. I’m just not interested.

But this song? Somehow I just love it.