The Eagles • Please Come Home for Christmas

Christmas Song of the Day: Please Come Home for Christmas, by The Eagles

Yesterday: In The Bleak Midwinter, by James Taylor

Sessions for the Eagles’ follow-up to Hotel California were dragging on, and executives at Asylum Records had grown concerned. Everybody needed a break.

"The record label was bugging us because The Long Run was, at this point, 6.8 months behind schedule," producer Bill Szymczyk told Miami's WPLG in 2015. Then Don Henley had an out-of-nowhere idea: "Well, maybe if we give them a Christmas single, they'll get off our back," Szymczyk remembered.

It proved to be just the rejuvenating time-out everybody needed. Problem: Eagles were holed up in Szymczyk's Bayshore Recording Studios – a converted motel at Coconut Grove, Fla., which was certainly no winter wonderland. "It was hot as hell," Glenn Frey later told Rolling Stone with a smirk. "Perfect for a Christmas record."

Henley suggested the recently reformulated Eagles cover an old Charles Brown song he remembered as a kid growing up in east Texas. Unlike the rest of what would become the Eagles' final classic-era album, Please Come Home for Christmas was quickly completed. A song devoted to holiday melancholy seemed to have finally ended their creative stalemate.

"We needed a break from the daily routine," Henley told Cincinnati's The Enquirer in 2017. "So, I suggested that we record a Christmas song, and I went on to suggest this song that I had remembered from my teenage years. The band members, and our producer, welcomed the idea."

They paired Please Come Home for Christmas with a goofy original titled Funky New Year, then added a suitably ironic sleeve image.

"We knocked it out in a matter of two, three days," Szymczyk told WPLG, "gave it to the label and then they indeed did get off our back until we were finished."

This stop-gap measure went on to become a surprise No. 18 smash single – then an annual Yuletide favorite, leading many newer fans to mistake Please Come Home for Christmas for an Eagles original. Henley has always been quick to correct the mistake, while recalling how he initially discovered the track on WNOE, a powerful 50,000-watt AM station out of New Orleans. “It broadcasted this wonderful, eclectic mix of music, which was like nothing I had ever heard on the pop stations in Texas," Henley told Cameron Crowe in a 2003 interview. "WNOE is where I first heard Charles Brown's original version of Please Come Home for Christmas. It always stuck with me. Our version was very much like that original.” 

Please Come Home for Christmas is a Christmas song, written in 1960 and released the same year by American blues singer and pianist Charles Brown. Hitting the Billboard Hot 100 chart in December 1961, the tune, which Brown co-wrote with Gene Redd, peaked at position # 76. It appeared on the Christmas Singles chart for nine seasons, hitting # 1 in 1972.

In 1978, as discussed above by Don Henley, the rock band Eagles covered and released the song as a holiday single. Their version peaked at # 18 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, the first Christmas song to reach the Top 20 on that chart since Roy Orbison’s Pretty Paper in 1963. Originally released as a vinyl 7" single, it was re-released as a CD single in 1995, reaching # 15 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart. This version includes the lyrics "bells will be ringing the sad, sad news” that is, a Christmas alone) as opposed to Brown's original version which references the "glad, glad news" (that is, Christmas in general).

I love this song partly because I’m an Eagles fan, and partly because it’s a really good Christmas song. So, whether you’re able to be home for Christmas this year, or you’re just at home with your current situation, I hope you spice up the celebration with great music, including The Eagles. 

Please Come Home for Christmas is a solid Christmas song. I know you’ll love it too. 

Enjoy listening to The Eagles. 

Here is the song on Spotify, as well as a video to enjoy: 

First, The Eagles on Spotify:

Please Come Home for Christmas, by The Eagles

Oddly, The Eagles rarely performed this song live in concert, so there isn’t a live performance video. However, I found a great cover of the song performed by Kelly Clarkson: 

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Full Lyrics 

Please Come Home for Christmas

The Eagles

Bells will be ringin' the sad, sad news

Oh, what a Christmas to have the blues

My baby's gone, I have no friends

To wish me greetings once again

Choirs will be singin' Silent Night

Christmas carols by candlelight

Please come home for Christmas, please come home for Christmas

If not for Christmas, by New Year's night

Friends and relations send salutations

Sure as the stars shine above

But this is Christmas, yes, Christmas, my dear

Some time of year to be with the one you love

So won't you tell me you'll never more roam?

Christmas and New Year's will find you home

There'll be no more sorrow, no grief and pain

And I'll be happy, happy once again

Ooh, there'll be no more sorrow, no grief and pain

And I'll be happy, Christmas once again

Please Come Home for Christmas