It is entirely in keeping that John Waters decorates an electric chair with tinsel and lights each year. Christmas is, of course, what you make of it. “You can love it or hate it but you can’t really ignore it,”  says Baltimore's most famous son, a caveat that might as well be adopted as the slogan for the season of goodwill. 

And partly what makes it such a unique time of year is the accumulation of so much festive pop-culture detritus. Items appear on store shelves that would look gauche in September: garish reds and greens, blues and golds, all kinds of lights. Enveloping the kitsch is the music that appears each year, aided by sleigh bells, choirs, strangely sonorous production techniques. 

Jingle Bell Rocks! follows the cult of the Christmas record through visits to Waters, Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne, and Joseph “Run” Simmons of Run DMC, among others. Directed by Mitchell Kezin, a Christmas record obsessive since childhood, the film is a cynic-free zone: instead it posits the Christmas record as a uniquely outré genre to be cherished, for its potential to tickle feelings of warmth and magic unique to the time of year. 

Making a good Christmas record has been a nice little earner for many an artist: the biggest record in American history is “White Christmas.” A Christmas song is crystallized in time more than a regular track. “The music and the memories and experiences are all combined,” says Coyne. “As you get older you hear a Christmas song by Andy Williams and are transported back in time to some joyous thing.” What matters is the sentiment, the sincerity of the performance. Phil Spector might these days be better associated with first-degree murder, but it is still his Christmas album that we turn to as the ultimate in the feeling of what it’s meant to be all about.

The film is an ode to lesser-known tracks, and to the select few crate-diggers rooting around for unknown yuletide vinyl: songs such as “Santa Ain’t Coming to Town” and the magnificently defiant 1970s single “Santa Claus is a Black Man” by Akim and Teddy Vann. “To me as a kid I thought what a great idea,” says Waters, who included the release on his 2004 compilation A John Waters Christmas. “Santa Claus is a black man, I hope.”

Tim Burrows is Copy Chief at NOWNESS.

Jingle Bell Rocks! is out in select US theaters this month, and available on DVD, cable VOD and digital platforms from December 9.