The March Xmas Field

Even though it’s still 90 at 8am in Tucson outside the March Xness Tucson Metroplex, and even though the Spirit Halloweens are opening their doors in the spaces abandoned by big box stores destroyed by Private Equity, your friendly neighborhood March Xness Selection Committee and our writers are Working on March Xmas, which will play this year in December!

I’m writing with good news for listeners and readers and holiday lovers, and bad news for those hopefuls who you put their names in the lottery who were not selected this year: the March Xmas (Dec 2026) field is now set…for the moment.

We’re still waiting on a couple of our writers to make their final selections, but here are the writers and the songs:

1. Katie Jean Shinkle, Smashing Pumpkins, Christmastime (1997)

2. Megan Culhane Galbraith, Joni Mitchell, River (1971)

3. Miriam Milena, Cleaners from Venus, Wivenhoe Bells II (1981)

4. K Chiucarello, Bruce Springsteen ‘Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town’ (Live At C.W. Post College, Greenvale, NY) (1975)

5. Rose Heredia, The Waitresses, Christmas Wrapping (1981)

6. Megan Baxter, Antonio Vivaldi’s “Winter” (L’Inverno), RV 297 (Performed 2016)

7. Lindsay Pharr, The Pogues, Fairytale of New York

8. Dermot Louchart, What Can You Get a Wookie for Christmas When He Already Owns a Comb (1980)

9. Sarah Rodman, Bing Crosby & David Bowie, Little Drummer Boy (1977)

10. Helmi Henkin, Taylor Swift, Last Christmas (2007)

11. Lily Herman, Hanson, What Christmas Means to Me (1997)

12. Dev Murphy, Sufjan Stevens, That Was the Worst Christmas Ever (2006)

13. Bea Troxel, Amy Grant, Emmanuel (1983)

14. Julie Lunde, Britney Spears, My Only Wish (This Year) (2000)

15. Darby Power, The Jackson 5, “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” (1975)

16. Katie Darby Mullins, Harvey Danger, Sometimes You Have to Work on Christmas (Sometimes) (2009)

17. Wade Pavlick, Deep Sea Diver, It’s Christmas Time (and I’m Still Alive), 2015

18. Christopher Stevenson, Tchaikovsky, “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” / Nutcracker - Bolshoi Ballet (2010)

19. Brigitte Lewis, Zooey Deschanel and Leon Redbone, Baby, It’s Cold Outside (2003)

20. James Butler-Gruett, The Vienna Boys Choir, “Hirtenterzett (Tuet eilends erwachen)” (1991)

21. Allison Kirkland, Whitney Houston, Do You Hear What I Hear (1987)

22. Mark Butler, Low, Just Like Christmas (2009)

23. Susan Briante, The Pretenders, 2000 Miles (1984)

24. Pete Figler, The Kinks, Father Christmas (1977)

25. Irene Cooper, Bad Religion, Hark the Herald Angels Sing (2013)

26. Kelly Shire, Robert Earl Keen, Merry Christmas from the Family (1994)

27. Lucinda Bliss: James Brown, Please Come Home for Christmas (1966)

28. Luuk Schokker, Miss Montreal, Being Alone at Christmas (2010)

29. Faith Grahmann, Thurl Ravenscroft, You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch (1966)

30. Ed Betzig, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Christmas All Over Again (1992)

31. Acadia Currah, The Fleet Foxes, White Winter Hymnal (2008)

32. Sara Wainscott, Anne Murray, Snowbird (1970)

33. Darcy Jay Gagnon, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence by Ryuichi Sakamoto (1983)

34. Jordan Wiklund, confirmed / pending

35. Sean Lovelace, Twisted Sister, Silver Bells (2006)

36. Donna Vorreyer, Alison Moyet, Coventry Carol (1987)

37. Jake McIntyre, The Vince Guaraldi Trio, Skating (1965)

38. Kristine Langley Mahler, Bing Crosby, White Christmas (1947)

39. Elliott Vanskike, April March & Los Cincos, Last Train to Christmas (1998)

40. Anastasia Nikolis, Catherine O’Hara, Danny Elfman, and Paul Reubens, Kidnap the Sandy Claws from The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)

41. Margarita Cruz, Frank Sinatra, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (1957)

42. Jeremy Michael Reed, Kermit the Frog / The Muppets, One More Sleep Til Christmas (1992)

43. Jim Hanas, Opal Foxx Quartet, Christmas (1994)

44. Jill Kolongowski, NSYNC, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays (1998)

45. Kathleen Rooney, Gayle Peevey, I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas (1953)

46. Annie Zaleski, Kate Bush, December Will Be Magic Again (1979 Xmas Special)

47. Sarah Perry, Queen, Thank God It’s Christmas (1984)

48. Will Hodge, Juliana Hatfield, Make It Home (1995)

49. Jackie Clark, The Chipmunks, Christmas Don’t Be Late (1959)

50. Lana Schwartz, The Ramones, Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight) (1989)

51. Christian Moher, Weird Al Yankovic, Christmas at Ground Zero (1986)

52. Jess Ducey, Bright Eyes, Blue Christmas (2002)

53. Reed Karaim: confirmed/pending

54. Ashley Strosnider, Darlene Love, Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) (1963)

55. Will Hansen, Fancy, Snowwhite Tigers (1996)

56. Nanette Donohue, Andy Williams, The Most Wonderful Time of the Year (1963)

57. David LeGault, Bob Dylan, Must Be Santa (2009)

58. Dan Mullen-Davis, Everclear, Hating You For Christmas (1997)

59. TJ Beitelman, The Beach Boys, The Man With All the Toys (Stereo Version), 1964

60. Lee Anne Gallaway-Mitchell, Cocteau Twins, Frosty the Snowman (2005)

61. Ron Hogan, Stan Freberg, Green Chri$tma$ (1958)

62. Pat Madden: The Notre Dame Glee Club, Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming (1977)

63. Andrea Panzeca, RuPaul, Merry Christmas, Mary (2015)

64. Alison Stine: Wendy & Lisa feat. Seal, Closing of the Year (1992)

Here’s the playlist on Youtube. We are expecting to see more after-lottery switches than ever this time around, so we wouldn’t be surprised if it changes a little before the bracket solidifies it at the beginning of November.

We imagine we’ll have an apple music and spotify one for you courtesy of our readers eventually and will share them when we do.

This is a pretty good list. Some classics. Some surprising choices by cool bands we like. Some novelty tracks.

Some are obviously Christmas or holiday songs. Some are not. (Love the choice of The Fleet Foxes’ “White Winter Hymnal,” which we’d never considered, but definitely fits the bill, and maybe this is the move that canonizes this banger on your holiday playlist?)

No one picked Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You,” for which we are grateful, as, like “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is to grunge or “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” is to goth, it would have been a prohibitive favorite and as such would be kind of a boring choice. These are not boring choices!

Some stats: we had 236 writers enter the lottery for March Xmas. We reserve at least 16 spots each year for new-to-Xness writers. By our count 31 of these writers have not written tournament essays before. (A few may have written only extracurriculars or subbed in for a late pinch-hit when someone dropped out; those folks get a little advantage in the lottery because we love you for doing that.) That’s a LOT of first-timers! And maybe unsurprising since March Xmas is a bit of a curve ball (and also at a different time of year).

The tournament will start the day after Thanksgiving this year and will conclude on or before Christmas Eve, we think. How this will change our voting patterns we have no idea!

Writers will turn their essays in by Nov 1. The brackets will be out in the first week of November. Until then the writers may change their minds about their song selections (or back out, if they need to; we understand).

We also now invite extracurriculars if your name didn’t get chosen (or even if it DID): come and write about a Christmas/holiday/winter seasonal song! To do so, email us at marchxness@thediagram.com and pitch us your idea.

We’ll start publishing these as early as September if we have enough of them, and will publish them up until the tourney starts; otherwise we’ll start running these on Nov 1 if we don’t have a ton.

You can write about any adjacent song not currently in the tournament. We also would be interested in publishing some essays about much you hate Christmas or Christmas songs or particular versions of particular Christmas songs. We could even publish some hateration essays anonymously if you want! If you want to bring March Badness into March Xmas, be in touch! Once we get into the tournament proper it’ll be the usual mix of banger essay after banger essay.

See you soon!

Ander & Megan