Sky Views: The most cherished Christmas anthem of them all

Ian King, Business Presenter

Once, before downloads and before TV talent shows cynically timed to finish in mid-December, being the Christmas Number One really mattered.

Tens of thousands of vinyl singles were bought in the week before Christmas and the battle to be Number One on the big day took in all strata of society.

Teenagers, the biggest singles buyers, hunted down the seasonal release from their favourite artist.

Lined up against them, almost as if in a pact, were legions of small children and their grandparents seeking the novelty hit that was invariably bound for the top.

In between were the mums, buying their own personal family-friendly favourite.

Everyone has their favourite Christmas Number One.

Do They Know It's Christmas? by Band Aid has topped the charts at Christmas on three separate occasions and has sold more than 3 million copies in total.

Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen was Number One at Christmas in 1975 and, after the death of the band's singer Freddie Mercury, again in 1991.

And the 1977 chart-topper, Mull Of Kintyre by Wings, is the third best-selling Christmas Number One of all time.

It has shifted more than 2 million copies - more than any single Paul McCartney recorded with The Beatles.

But it is the 1973 Christmas Number One that sticks in the memory for many Britons of a certain age.

It is also a song of greater socio-economic importance than is often appreciated.

Here's why.

1973 was an exceptionally grim year for the UK economy.

In October that year a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria had invaded Israel, launching their attack on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.

The United States came to Israel's aid and, in response, Arab members of the Opec cartel of oil-producing nations imposed an embargo on oil exports to the US.

This was later extended to other nations deemed sympathetic to Israel, including the Netherlands, sparking a surge in oil prices.

The oil price shock sparked a global energy crisis and Britain - this was before North Sea oil had begun coming onshore - suffered.

We British love a crisis and, for many, Christmas 1973 - with families huddled together in the semi-darkness and candlelight - remains a memorable one.

With nearly three-quarters of the UK's electricity coming from coal-fired power stations, and with output already hit by overtime bans and go-slows imposed by miners, rail workers and power workers unions, the crisis quickly escalated.

A drive to conserve energy was launched that included speed limits of 50 miles per hour on the roads, the introduction of petrol coupons and restrictions on street lighting.

Households were asked to heat only one room in their homes and to turn down the thermostat.

On 13 December 1973, Edward Heath, the Prime Minister, addressed the nation on TV.

He began: "As Prime Minister, I want to speak to you plainly about the grave emergency now facing our country.

"In the House of Commons, this afternoon, I announced more severe restriction on the use of electricity. You may already have heard the details of these.

"We are asking you to cut down to the absolute minimum the use of electricity for heating and for other purposes in your homes."

Mr Heath said that, from the start of the new year, the use of electricity would be limited in almost all factories, shops and offices to three days a week.

He added: "Jobs will be in danger and take-home pay will be less. We shall have to postpone some of the hopes and aims we have set ourselves for expansion and for our standard of living."

Then, in the most-remembered line of the broadcast, he went on: "We shall have a harder Christmas than we have known since the war."

The following day, Friday 14, the lighting ceremony for the Christmas tree in London's Trafalgar Square - an annual gift from the city of Oslo in gratitude for support during the war - was held.

The 650 bulbs on the tree were lit momentarily and then switched off.

The Norwegians offered to send a special electricity generator for the tree so it would not have to depend on the national grid and, in the end, Geoffrey Rippon, the environment minister, was forced to give special permission for all outdoor trees to be lit for the three days over Christmas.

By then, Britons had already got used to shopping for presents in dimmed lights, fretting that cards and gifts might not reach their intended recipients by the big day.

In the week after Mr Heath's broadcast, blackouts had swept the country, while millions of pounds were wiped from the value of the stock market which, by now, was in the middle of a horrific reverse in which the old FT30 lost nearly three quarters of its value between the beginning of 1973 and the end of 1974.

The state-owned British Steel Corporation warned that up to 100,000 workers might have to be laid off and job losses everywhere seemed likely.

Not that it was all bad.

We British love a crisis and, for many, Christmas 1973 - with families huddled together in the semi-darkness and candlelight - remains a memorable one.

And the soundtrack to it was Merry Xmas Everybody by Slade.

That year had already been a high-water mark for glam rock, with the likes of Wizzard's See My Baby Jive, The Sweet's Blockbuster, and Suzi Quatro's Can The Can all topping the charts, while the lads from Wolverhampton had themselves enjoyed two Number Ones already in 1973 in Cum On Feel The Noize and Skweeze Me Pleeze Me, both songs going straight to the top of the charts, a feat not achieved since Get Back by The Beatles four years earlier.

Noddy Holder, Slade's lead singer, wrote the song, aided by a couple of whiskies, at his parents' house after a drinking session with the band.

He realised quickly that he'd come up with something special.

As he told the Daily Mail in 2006: "Once I got the line Does your granny always tell you/That the old ones are the best, I knew I'd got a right cracker on my hands. It says it all.

"We've all heard someone's granny say it, usually after a couple of sherries, when her bloomers are starting to show and she's up dancing."

The song was recorded in July that year - borrowing a piano from John Lennon, who was recording the album Mind Games in the same studio - in the middle of a summer heatwave in New York, as drummer Don Powell recalled in 2012: "It was the only time we could record the song as we were on a world tour and so busy. We got some strange looks from the American technicians as we all sweated in the studio, singing about Christmas. It was bizarre."

Advanced orders were so strong that most record pressing plants in Britain and France cranked it out at the expense of other artists, depriving rival acts like the New Seekers and Marie Osmond of the chance to top the charts.

Ironically, another casualty of this was a fellow Black Country band, Wizzard, production of whose record I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day was also hit by confusion over which record label was supposed to be releasing it.

That, too, remains a festive stalwart.

Yet it is Merry Xmas Everybody that, for many, remains the most cherished Christmas anthem of them all.

As Noddy Holder put it: "We'd decided to write a Christmas song and I wanted to make it reflect a British family Christmas.

"Economically, the country was up the creek. The miners had been on strike, along with the grave-diggers, the bakers and almost everyone else. I think people wanted something to cheer them up - and so did I.

"That's why I came up with the line 'look to the future now, it's only just begun'."

It is truly a lyric - and a song - not only uniquely suited for 1973, but for the ages.

Sky Views is a series of comment pieces by Paste BN editors and correspondents, published every morning.

Previously: - Adam Parsons - Spain is facing its demons