Fifty-six years ago this week, Motown put out a record that still plays in kitchens and living rooms every December. The Jackson 5 Christmas Album came out on October 15, 1970, and it was an instant hit.
It spent four weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s Christmas Albums chart that December. It was the best-selling Christmas album of 1970, and it topped that list again in 1972. All these years later, it has sold more than 3 million copies.
Little Michael and his brothers made Christmas sound like pure joy. But here’s the part that surprises a lot of folks.
At the Jackson house, Christmas morning wasn’t like it was in yours.
The Jackson 5 sing “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”
Just try to listen to young Michael on this one without smiling. He was only 12, and he already sang like he’d been doing it for 50 years.
So here’s the surprise. The Jackson family was raised in the Jehovah’s Witness faith, and their beliefs meant they did not celebrate Christmas at home.
Think about that. Five boys sang some of the most beloved holiday songs in American history, and they recorded them while not marking the holiday themselves. They gave millions of families a soundtrack for a morning they didn’t have in their own home.
There’s nothing sad about it. It was simply their faith, and the family held it dear. It only makes the warmth in these recordings even more remarkable. The brothers brought real heart to songs about a day they knew mostly from the radio and the records they were making.
Years later Michael would talk about experiencing his first real Christmas as an adult, and the joy he found in it. But back in 1970, these five kids were giving the gift of Christmas to everyone else first.
The album is full of songs you’d know in a heartbeat. “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” was a single. And their take on “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” still turns up on holiday radio every single year, with Michael’s sweet little voice right out front.
The Jackson 5 sing “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”
Listen for the moment Michael giggles his way through the story. He sells it the way only a kid could.
So this week, when you dig out your holiday music, remember where one of your favorites came from. Five brothers from Indiana, a Motown studio and a batch of Christmas songs made with more love than almost anybody realized at the time.