The Upstage

"Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" vs. "Merry Christmas Baby"

Happy holidays!

Caryn Rose

22 Dec 2025 — 6 min read

Bruce’s guest appearance during Steve Van Zandt’s recent set at the WHY Hunger benefit at the Pony has rekindled the eternal discussion as to the superiority of “Merry Christmas, Baby” over “Santa Claus is Coming To Town” as the E Street holiday cover of choice. Given the generational split I observed as the comments rolled into chat and Instagram, I thought it would be worth exploring the history of these two songs on E Street.

SANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO TOWN

Nowadays when everyone has some kind of holiday song or even a Christmas record, it is probably hard to imagine what it was like on FM radio when you didn’t have a lot of choices. That is part of why there was an explosion of surprise and delight when Bruce’s version of “Santa Claus” first made it onto radio. When your choice is “Felix Navidad” for the 500th time or “Jingle Bells” “sung” by barking dogs on tape, a modern-sounding rendition of “Santa” was a balm for the soul. Add to that the hilarious introduction -- for acolytes, something we expected, but for non-fans, it was an absolute novelty -- and you have a winner.

Yes, A Christmas Gift to You From Phil Spector was right there, and it’s that version of “Santa Claus” that Bruce and E Street liberally cribbed from -- but in the 70’s and 80’s, those kinds of oldies were only found on oldies radio. You weren’t going to hear that or any other vintage holiday tunes on the FM band. But Bruce Springsteen? They’d track that as often as they could get away with it. You could hop from radio station to radio station in December and find it mid-song. It was always a sign that the holidays had arrived. It was everywhere, all the time, because it didn’t suck.

As we now know, the recording we know and love is from the officially released December 12, 1975 show at C.W. Post on Long Island. It was released to radio stations as a promo-only track and then it was so popular that the promo single got bootlegged. Because why would you want to officially release something that was exceedingly popular and got played on the radio all the time?

It didn’t get officially released until 1981, when it was included as part of In Harmony II, a record from Children’s Television Workshop. In Harmony II also featured Billy Joel, James Taylor, Teddy Pendergrass, and Dr. John, who offered a delightful cover of “Splish Splash” (Also interesting to observe that in 1981, Billy Joel [correctly] got billing over Bruce.)

According to Brucebase, the song was being performed at concerts at 1973. Despite my well-documented suspicion of "attendee recollections" I’m inclined to believe these, because it at least was something that attendees would be familiar with and would be likely to remember, and it'd be a curious thing to fabricate because at the time Bruce Springsteen was not well-known for performing this song.

But where it probably entered the extended consciousness of Springsteen fans was its appearance at the 1975 shows at the Boston Music Hall, because a taper was there. In 1975, the documented performances took place in December (as it should be, back when we were a proper country and had rules about these things). It wasn’t until 1978 that Bruce started dragging it out early, playing it at the Capitol Theatre because he thought the tour was going to end on October 2. Boston and Atlanta also got the “Christmas in September” treatment that year.

In 1978 and 1980 “Santa” appeared after Thanksgiving, but once we get to 1984, a September appearance at the Spectrum in Philadelphia was at one point the earliest appearance of “Santa Claus.”

This is something a little special for Philadelphia because we might not be seeing you for a little while, so this is the Crazy Bosses’ Christmas in September!

The problem with these early appearances is that once it’s out, it’s out. So "Santa" went on to appear at shows over the next two months and once the tour rolled into November, well, how can you not play “Santa Claus”? Christmas is almost here. Shows in January? Well, you just missed it, we’ll play it. The most out of range “Santa Claus” in this time period is when it showed up at the last night of the six-night stand in Sydney in March of 1985.

Other interesting and out of range appearances:

July 11, 2008 in Finland: To be fair, they’ve kind of earned it. This was “Santa”’s first appearance in Finland, because Bruce is not going to go to Scandinavia in the winter, so fair play.
June 13, 2009 at Bonnaroo: “It’s too hot for Santa. If I’m gonna sing this song in this fucking heat, I better hear some voices out there. It’s 259 days until Christmas!”
July 26, 2009 in Spain: Would love it if the Spaniards who subscribe to the newsletter could weigh in on why this happened. I'm guessing there had to be a sign?
May 18, 2014 at Mohegan Sun: Last show of the High Hopes tour.
May 16, 2024 in Cork: Another first appearance, this time in Ireland, and to be fair, this was a show with torrential rain.

It’s funny because if you asked me, I would have said that these happened a lot more than they actually have. It just goes to show you how unreliable memory can be.

MERRY CHRISTMAS BABY

“Merry Christmas Baby” was originally recorded and popularized by Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers, featuring lead vocals and piano by the great Charles Brown. Once Brown went solo, it became his calling card. The man had style.

Chuck Berry recorded a version not that distant from the original, as did Ike and Tina and even Elvis. But the inspiration for the E Street Band’s rendition comes from none other than Otis Redding. It is a carbon copy. There is no doubt what they were trying to do.

The version of “Merry Christmas Baby” that was first released as the b-side of the “War” single was recorded at Nassau Coliseum on 12-31-80. That’s the same version that Bruce gave to Jimmy Iovine when he was putting together the first A Very Special Christmas album, released in 1987. That record -- a tribute to Iovine’s father, who had recently passed -- not only raised millions of dollars for the Special Olympics, but it also proved that there was a market for contemporary covers of Christmas classics that didn’t suck.

“Merry Christmas Baby” is the superior song because it is an adult song and not a kid’s song sung by adults. It is a better song and the E Street Band’s version is borrowed from a legendary and superior interpreter of material. There’s literally no contest. I will always feel sentimental about “Santa Claus” for the reasons above, but if you asked me to pick between the two, “Merry Christmas Baby” is the only possible choice, all day every day.

It doesn’t show up as often as “Santa Claus” because it is sadly requested less and also because it’s harder to sing – it requires command and finesse, while you can just belt “Santa” and it’ll be fine (plus the audience will do most of the work for you). Bruce Springsteen is certainly capable of delivering either, but I can’t really blame him for taking the easier option at the end of a show where he’s being pelted with Santa hats three songs in.

Some great versions of "Merry Christmas Baby":