The Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan recently died.

By Katelyn Mensah

Published: Sunday, 17 December 2023 at 10:24 AM


After a week of voting, RadioTimes.com readers have named the best Christmas song ever as the Fairytale of New York.

In our exclusive poll, we asked readers what they thought the best Christmas song of all time was, breaking down by decades from the 1940s to 2010s.

The 1980s poll saw Last Christmas by Wham! up against Fairytale of New York by The Pogues featuring Kirsty MacColl, with the latter winning the poll by six per cent.

In the following poll, Fairytale of New York was up against Mariah Carey’s classic All I Want For Christmas Is You, and the former won by a landslide with 70.3 per cent in comparison to 29.7 per cent.

It then came down to the final four: White Christmas, Merry Christmas Everybody, Fairytale of New York and Underneath the Tree. It was The Pogues’s 1988 Irish folk-style ballad that took the crown with 53.7 per cent.