Somebody once told me that the best Christmas song is actually by Smash Mouth

Love them or hate them, it’s the season for Christmas songs – and they are everywhere. Thousands of them, in any number of versions and varieties.

You’ve heard them all a million times. They’ve been drilled into your brain like Arnie in Total Recall. They’ve been covered and rearranged and reimagined more times than Santa has been down chimneys. Some are good, some are terrible, most are entirely redundant. Some are simply inescapable – looking at you, Mariah Carey.

Smash Mouth, it’s time to (baggage) claim your Christmas title.

There are hymns such as Silent Night and Hark! The Herald Angels Sing; traditional carols such as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Jingle Bells; smooth crooners including It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year and Let it Snow; modern pop bangers such as Santa Tell Me and Last Christmas.

It’s a crowded marketplace. For the select few holiday songs that manage to become enduring hits that bolster supermarket playlists, TV commercials and Michael Buble’s bank account, there are thousands that don’t make it into the public consciousness. For every Mistletoe by Justin Bieber or My Only Wish by Britney Spears, there’s a White Winter Hymnal by Fleet Foxes or a Boots by the Killers.

I’m here to tell you that the best Christmas song ever is one that you’ve never heard before. Not only that … it’s by Smash Mouth.

Yes, that Smash Mouth. The guys from Shrek. The band that looked like semi-professional tenpin bowlers, or a cult dedicated to the worship of Hawaiian shirts and speed dealer sunnies.

The song is called Baggage Claim, and it’s perfect. It’s everything you could possibly ask for in a Christmas song. It’s fun, catchy, touching and sentimental without being too corny, all wrapped beautifully in a pretty alt-rock package.

Originally released in 2005 as the sole original track on the band’s Christmas album The Gift of Rock, it was largely ignored at the time and now can’t even be found on Spotify. It is on YouTube though, and that’s great news because it would be a travesty to lose access to this absolute gem of the festive season.

When you listen to it, I guarantee you’ll have two immediate thoughts: 1. This song rules – clearly Smash Mouth are the poet laureates of a generation, and 2. How on earth was this absolute banger left off the soundtrack to the 2007 DreamWorks Christmas special Shrek The Halls?

Baggage Claim is a delicious slice of alt-rock pudding, a Christmas tune for a generation raised in the post-punk revival, falling somewhere in the delightful morass of mid-2000s rock between Blink-182, Modest Mouse and early Arctic Monkeys.

Over a propulsive, ever-so-slightly-distorted riff, lead singer Steve Harwell (RIP) relays the all-too-relatable story of picking up a loved one from the airport just in time for Christmas, driving around the old neighbourhood and reminiscing on holiday memories. An exercise in simple, evocative storytelling, it’s nostalgic and hopeful and surprisingly poetic.

Lines like “Never saw Santa Claus’ face/ Apartment’s got no fireplace” conjure memories of whispering conspiratorially with siblings as you wait for Santa to arrive and falling asleep every time. Others, like “A jet plane ain’t no Christmas sleigh/ And the pilot’s beard ain’t long or grey”, will resonate with anyone whose family has scattered in adulthood and where catch-ups are joyful but regretfully sparse. “Saint Somebody’s bells are ringing/ And I hear a Christmas movie through the ceiling”, Harwell sings, as your body fills with the spirit of the season and your Hawaiian shirt grows three sizes that day.

It packs a heck of a chorus, too, as rousing as Santa Claus is Coming to Town, as resounding as Last Christmas, and as catchy as Jingle Bell Rock. It’ll rattle around your head like the train set your fun uncle promised you back in the day.

So if you’re looking for a new Christmas banger to add to your rotation, one that won’t make you want to stuff your ears with cranberry sauce, give Baggage Claim a whirl. And hey, maybe one of these days they’ll bring out a sequel to Shrek the Halls and we’ll get a Smash Mouth-flavoured Christmas miracle.

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