Well the weather is cruel
And the season of Yule lifts the heart but it still hurts
You’ve got your career spent the best part of last year apart and it still hurts
So that’s why I pray each and every Christmas day that it won’t end

Christmas Time (Don’t Let the Bells End) by The Darkness

I’m no Scrooge, but Christmas isn’t my favourite time of year. I always struggle to decide what presents to buy, I’m not keen on turkey and that weird week between Christmas Day and New Year messes with my head.

This is also the tenth Christmas period I will spend working in a supermarket. As soon as we are into December the dreaded Christmas music starts getting pumped through the PA system. The same few festive pop hits, the ones we hear every year, joined by dreary choral gibberish. Over the course of two shifts, I must have heard at least ten different versions of Santa Baby.

If only they would add what I consider to be the best Christmas song of them all to the playlist – Christmas Time (Don’t Let the Bells End) by The Darkness.

There’s a chance you might have forgotten about The Darkness by now. They were briefly massive in the early 2000s when their debut album Permission to Land went to number one, led by the single I Believe in a Thing Called Love. In 2004 they won three BRIT awards, including Best British Group. For us here in the east of England, the band had added significance by hailing from humble Lowestoft.

In the build up to Christmas 2003, The Darkness released Christmas Time (Don’t Let the Bells End) – and it was a breath of fresh air. Kicking off with a heavy guitar riff, the lyrics are delivered in falsetto style by frontman Justin Hawkins. They almost sound upbeat, but if you listen closely they are tinged with sadness – he only sees his lover at Christmas, and he doesn’t want it to end and her to go away again.

Those lyrics might just be a reason we don’t hear the song alongside Slade, Wizzard and Chris Rea every year. As Hawkins put it:

We managed to get bellend into a Christmas song without it getting banned!

Justin Hawkins, The Darkness

Yep, they knew exactly what they were doing.

The song was in the race for Christmas number one in 2003 but came in at number two behind the utterly miserable Mad World cover by Michael Andrews and Gary Jules. It was accompanied by a hilarious video in which every single Christmassy thing anyone can think of was packed into 3 minutes and 41 seconds, then topped off by Hawkins shouting ‘BELLS END!’ in front of a choir of children.

As for The Darkness, Hawkins left the band in 2006 after finishing rehab for cocaine and alcohol abuse. He and his former bandmates were involved with new, separate projects before The Darkness reformed in 2011. They released a new album in October this year – but it’s safe to say the glory days are in the past.

But I urge you to make this song a part of every Christmas from now on – it’s the perfect antidote to the musical crimes that have been committed at this ‘most wonderful time of the year’.