Going back to 1976, we have a Christmas number one which is actually a Christmas record. It was "When A Child Is Born" by Johnny Mathis. Released in November, this would gradually climb the charts before finally getting to number one Christmas week.
The next highest charting Christmas record was "Bionic Santa" by Chris Hill. This was basically short clips of a number of records at the time incorporated into a story about a bionic Santa being created. Chris Hill was a DJ who had done a similar thing the year before with "Renta Santa". Both records reached number 10 and spent 7 weeks in the charts, and that was the chart career of Chris Hill.
The other Christmas record that year was "Ring Out Solstice Bells" by Jethro Tull. This was their first hit for 5 years and would be their final new top 40 hit. Their career was far from over though, being more successful with their albums than their singles.
A surprisingly low number of Christmas hits given it was the 70s. However, to give you an idea of what was going on at the time, the week before Christmas a new entry to the top 40 was "Anarchy In The UK" by the Sex Pistols. Like with a lot of other music that came before punk, Christmas records were no longer in, at least until two of the Sex Pistols members would collaborate with Thin Lizzy 3 years later.
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