Rockin’ around the Christmas streams: why festive music is bigger than ever

As they chase a wildly lucrative market with their new Christmas albums, Gary Barlow, Jamie Cullum, Leona Lewis and more explain the financial - and emotional - pull of a seasonal hit

In July 1968, the visionary US guitarist John Fahey - whose albums, with names such as Death Chants, Breakdowns & Military Waltzes, hadn't exactly been money-spinners - was out the back of a record store. I saw all these cartons of Bing Crosby's White Christmas," he later recalled. The clerk said it always sells out. So I got the idea to do a Christmas album."

The New Possibility: John Fahey's Guitar Soli Christmas Album has not achieved the ubiquity of Merry Xmas Everybody or Last Christmas, but it served its role. Purists might sneer - Mojo magazine once dismissed the album as Cliff-territory bland" - but The New Possibility has never been out of print, selling more than 100,000 copies. Fahey ended up making five Christmas albums, and they served as a financial bulwark in a career that had its share of vicissitudes.