A haunting un-Christmas Christmas song. Yeah ... Deck The Halls, this ain't!
I Believe in Father Christmas - Greg Lake
I Believe in Father Christmas is a song by Greg Lake (best known as a member of King Crimson and Emerson Lake and Palmer) and Lake's only kit as a solo artist. While considered a Christmas song, this wasn't Lake's intention; he claims to have written the song in protest at the commercialization of Christmas.
Recorded in 1974 and released in 1975, the song became the #2 Christmas hit on the UK charts. A second recording was done by the full ELP trio, with a more stripped down arrangement, and was included on the 1977 Works Volume II. Recorded a third time in 1993 for the ELP box set The Return of the Manticore, Lake himself revisited it again for the 2002 compilation A Classic Rock Christmas.
The song's video, shot mainly in the Sinai desert and Qumran in the West Bank, also contained shots of the Vietnam War, leading to complaints from some people that it should not be shown with more lighthearted Christmas songs. The instrumental riff between verses is borrowed from Sergei Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kijé Suite (the Troika portion), written for the 1934 Soviet film, Poruchik Kizhe.
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