I Wanna Be Santa Clause (1999)
1. Come On Christmas, Christmas Come On 2. Winter Wonderland 3. I Wanna Be Santa Clause 4. The Little Drummer Boy 5. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer 6. Christmas Eve 7. The Christmas Dance 8. Christmas Time is Here Again 9. Blue Christmas 10.Dear Santa 11.White Christmas 12.Pax Um Biscum (Peace Be With You)
Every holiday season brings with it the inevitable glut of Christmas albums—some reverent, some ridiculous, and most of them entirely redundant. There’s only so much one can endure in the way of yet another version of Silent Night or I’ll Be Home for Christmas before reaching for the volume knob, or perhaps the aspirin. So it’s a pleasant surprise when an artist approaches the genre with something approaching personality, playfulness, and—improbably—originality. Such is the case with Ringo Starr’s I Wanna Be Santa Claus.
Holiday records, by their nature, demand a light touch. Fortunately, Ringo—by this stage long sober and firmly settled into his role as rock’s perennial good-will ambassador—possesses just the right blend of sincerity and silliness. There’s a wide-eyed, almost childlike glee that runs through the entire album. And while he treats the material with respect, he never makes the mistake of taking himself too seriously. This is a Christmas album, after all, not a cathedral mass.
What immediately distinguishes this record from the seasonal crowd is its wealth of original content. Ringo co-writes no fewer than six new songs for the project, in addition to dusting off an unreleased Beatles-era holiday number. And rather remarkably, these new songs sit comfortably alongside the handful of more traditional standards. His renditions of The Little Drummer Boy and Winter Wonderland are as bouncy and affable as one could hope, filtered through that unmistakable Liverpudlian charm and delivered with a wink. There's nothing particularly groundbreaking in the arrangements, but they exude such warmth and good cheer that one hardly minds.
The originals—Come On Christmas, Christmas Come On, I Wanna Be Santa Claus, Dear Santa, and others—are spirited, melodic, and unmistakably Ringo. There's a festive buoyancy that propels them forward, each imbued with a kind of giddy goodwill that might have felt forced in lesser hands. Here, it works—largely because it's clear he means every word. The man sounds like he's genuinely having fun, which, in the barren landscape of celebrity holiday records, is no small feat.
The only moment that slightly jars is the album’s closer, Pax Um Biscum (Peace Be With You), an Eastern-tinged meditation that feels a bit too solemn and spiritually abstract to sit comfortably alongside the rest of the record’s tinsel-strewn cheer. Still, even this can be forgiven. Peace and love, after all, have long been Ringo’s calling cards.
In the end, I Wanna Be Santa Claus delivers exactly what it promises: a joyful, unpretentious celebration of the season, complete with original songs, traditional fare, and enough festive charm to carry it through repeat listens. Put it on at your next holiday gathering and don’t be surprised if a few guests ask, “Wait—is this actually good?” It is. And like the best holiday traditions, it never really gets old.