Seasonal Streaming: Donny Hathaway, “This Christmas” – 50th Anniversary Video
Welcome to “Seasonal Streaming,” where – with an awareness of the holidays on the horizon (yes, we’re still in early December, but they’re literally getting closer every day) – we take a look at a tune from the Rhino digital catalog that, if it isn’t already on your radar, certainly should be.
It’s been 50 years since Donny Hathaway penned “This Christmas” with an eye toward the tune becoming the first Black Christmas carol, which is a pretty optimistic mindset by anyone’s standards, but here we are in 2020, and it’s the 30th most performed holiday song of all time, so...here’s to optimism!
To commemorate “This Christmas” hitting the big 5-0, Rhino has a new animated video for the song, one animated by cartoonist Lonnie Millsap and featuring Donnie, his wife (Eulaulah), and his daughters (Lalah and Kenya), and it’s set in his hometown of Chicago. There are easter eggs aplenty for Hathaway fans, but we won’t spoil them, we’ll let you spot them for yourself.
For the record, Lalah Hathaway is pretty darned excited about the release of this video: in a statement, she said, “I’m thrilled for all the people who have loved this song forever and for all those who are just discovering this treasure. YOU ARE GOING TO LOVE IT!”
So give it a look, and after that, give a spin to our 100-song Donny Hathaway playlist. It’s all the Donny you could hope to hear, and it goes down as smooth during the holidays as it does throughout the rest of the year.
