Why NewSong’s ‘The Christmas Shoes’ Fails So Hard

Some Christmas music is widely loved by multiple generations. Meanwhile, “The Christmas Shoes” by NewSong is a Yuletide tune that is as popular as it is despised. How did a song that seems innocuous on the surface end up hated by so many people? And what were its songwriters thinking?

NewSong’s ‘The Christmas Shoes’ is a religious song with disturbing implications

Few of the songs in the pop song Christmas canon attempt to tell a story. Meanwhile, “The Christmas Shoes” has its own little plot. It’s about someone at the store looking to get some Christmas shopping done. The narrator notices an anxious little boy who asks him to help him buy some shoes for his dying mother.

Here’s where things get rough. The child wants to give his mother the shoes so she can look beautiful if she “meets Jesus tonight.” The narrator buys the shoes for the child and realizes that God sent the little boy to help him see the true meaning of Christmas.

“The Christmas Shoes” is one of the only famous religious Christmas songs written in the past 25 years. Its theology feels bizarre. The little boy in the song seems to think his mother will take whatever clothes she’s wearing when she dies to heaven with her. That idea has precedents in ancient forms of paganism (why do you think the pharaohs had such lavish tombs?), but it’s not a Christian idea. But the real kicker here is that the song’s narrator believes that this child’s suffering was meant to raise his spirits. That’s an idea with ugly implications.

The sound of “The Christmas Shoes” doesn’t help. The overly sentimental country-pop production is just ghastly. The children’s choir makes it over the top and trite. Many things have gotten worse in the past 25 years, but at least we collectively realized children’s choruses have no place in popular music.

NewSong sat on ‘The Christmas Shoes’ for years

During a 2020 interview with American Songwriter, NewSong’s Leonard Ahlstrom discussed penning “The Christmas Shoes” with fellow member Eddie Carswell. “Eddie and I wrote the first verse and chorus but sat on it for a couple years because nobody really seemed interested in the idea,” he said. “We finally finished it and I produced it myself, never imagining that it would mean so much to so many people, and that it would still be getting airplay years later.” 

“An old friend of mine called me just today and said, ‘I just heard your song on the radio and thought I’d give you a call,'” he added. “It’s been wonderful that people still hear it, that it still means something to people year after year.”

Despite the controversy, the tune is still very popular

Carswell discussed the enduring popularity of “The Christmas Shoes.” “A lot of concertgoers come out to see us at Christmas because of the song and the entire Christmas Shoes CD and because so many of them are familiar with everything that happened from it,” Carswell said. “It’s almost become like ‘Jingle Bells’ or something, almost part of that category.”

“The Christmas Shoes” has inspired a lot more derision than “Jingle Bells.”