Last December in the run up to Christmas I took a look at the Christmas charts every ten years from 1956-2016 and I thought I'd do the same this year beginning with 1957.
1957 brought us the second Christmas number one which was actually a Christmas song. This was "Mary's Boy Child" by Harry Belafonte. It rounded off the debut year in the UK charts for Harry Belafonte which proved to be his most successful with him also scoring a number 2, a number 3 and a number 18 with his other three hits of the year. It's still a well known Christmas record but it's perhaps the Boney M cover that is better known. He would reach number ten with this the following year as well as having a less successful Christmas record with "The Song Of Mary".
Elvis Presley had his first Christmas hit in the UK in 1957 with "Santa Bring My Baby Back To Me". Despite this being just his second year in the UK charts, this was his 19th UK single and 12th of the year. It would be his highest charting Christmas record reaching number seven.
We had the second charting of "White Christmas" this year coming from Pat Boone. It was however the first vocal version to chart as it's first appearance in the charts was an instrumental by Mantovani in 1952. It would be his least successful UK single to date, the charts were a Top 30 at the time and this reached number 29.
There was one more Christmas record in the charts this year, "Snowbound for Christmas" by Dickie Valentine. This was the third year in a row Dickie Valentine had a Christmas hit, he had the first Christmas number one which was a Christmas song in 1955 with "Christmas Alphabet" and in 1956 had had a number 8 with "Christmas Island". This one however only made number 28.
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