A Personalized Christmas Song for Someone You Love

How to ask for a Christmas song in the quiz

Christmas goes in through the occasion question. Everything else works the way it does for any song, and each answer has a job.

1. Who it's for. Pick the person: Mom, Grandpa, your wife, a sibling, a friend.
2. The occasion. Choose "Something else…", and when it asks "What's the occasion?", type Christmas.
3. What they're like. A few words about who they are the rest of the year. The song is about a person who happens to love Christmas, not about the holiday in general.
4. Memories. This is where your Christmas details go. Three or four specific ones, written the way you'd tell them at the table.
5. A dedication. What you want to say to them this Christmas, in a sentence or two.
6. Genre, era and voice. The music they love, the decade it leans toward, and a female voice, a male voice or either.

Once your notes are ready, the questions take about three minutes. Gathering the details takes longer, and it's the part worth doing slowly.

The Christmas details that belong in it

A Christmas song works when it could only be about your Christmas. Snow, stockings and mistletoe turn up in every carol on the radio. The clothespin reindeer your son made in second grade turns up in exactly one house.

Use these prompts to find yours. Write down whatever comes first, then come back to the list a day later.

• The tree. Real or fake, who picks it, where it stands, the year it tipped over. Say your dad still measures the ceiling with a tape measure and still comes home with a tree a foot too tall. That's a verse.
• The ornament with a story. Every box has one: the felt angel from a great-aunt, the glass pickle someone hides each year, the plastic ornament from your first apartment. Name who made it, or who is allowed to hang it.
• Christmas Eve. The one present opened early, the drive to see the lights on the same three streets, the candlelight service, the matching pajamas everyone pretends to hate.
• The recipe. Whose it is, the stained card it lives on, the step only one person knows. Tamales on the 24th, a toffee that has to cool on the back porch, sugar cookies cut only into stars.
• Their part in it. The one who wraps everything at 2 a.m., reads the same story every year, or plays Santa in a beard from the drugstore.
• The Christmas that went wrong. The burnt ham, the snowed-in airport, the year the dog ate the cookies. These often become the favorite memory.

Pick three or four, not ten. One detail about the tree or the ornaments, one about Christmas Eve and one about the person is plenty for a single song. And if you live somewhere warm, leave the snow out. A palm tree with lights on it is more yours.

Choosing a genre they love

Choose the music they'd put on during an ordinary drive in July. Your answers carry the Christmas, so the genre only has to sound like them.

• Country for the person whose truck radio never leaves the country station.
• R&B for a partner, when you want it slow and close.
• Acoustic for a parent who'd find a big production too much.
• Jazz for a grandparent who still plays records on Sunday afternoons.
• Worship for someone whose Christmas centers on the church service.
• Pop or Rock for a sibling or friend who'd tease you for anything too sentimental.

The era sets the decade the music leans toward, from the 60s through the 2020s, or Timeless. A simple rule: pick the decade when they were about twenty, the music they still know every word of. Then choose the voice they'd most like to hear.

A December timeline for Christmas morning

You don't need weeks for this, but a little room makes the morning calmer. Here is one way to space it out.

1. Early December: Start a note on your phone. Add details as they come up while you decorate. Ask a sibling or an old friend for one story you've never heard.
2. Mid-December, one quiet evening: Answer the questions. Type Christmas as the occasion and paste your best details into the memories.
3. When the song arrives: Listen alone first, with headphones. Check every name and nickname, and how they're pronounced. If something is off, ask for a revision while there's plenty of December left.
4. The week before Christmas: Download the song as an MP3 so you aren't counting on wifi that morning. The lyric artwork comes as a digital file, so print it if you'd like something to wrap.
5. Christmas Eve: Pick the moment, charge the speaker, and tell one person the plan so someone else is ready with tissues.
6. Christmas morning: Play it after the last present, while everyone is still in pajamas and nobody has started cooking.

Starting later than this still works. Nothing ships, so the only deadline is the time you need to listen and feel sure about it.

When a Christmas song is the right gift, and when it isn't

A song suits the person who makes Christmas happen for everyone else and rarely gets thanked for it. It suits someone spending the holidays far away, who can open a link from anywhere. And it suits the family that tells the same stories every year, because now the stories have somewhere to live.

It's a weaker fit for someone who asked for one specific thing. Give them that thing, and let the song be the extra. If they hate being the center of a full living room, skip the big moment: text it to them on Christmas morning with one line, and let them hear it alone first.

Put your Christmas in a song

Bring your note with the details. Choose who it's for, pick "Something else…", type Christmas, and answer the rest. We write their song from your answers.

A Christmas song from Only Happy Tears is free to start, and you hear it before you pay, so you'll know it sounds like your family before the morning arrives. When your details are ready, start their Christmas song.