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One of the rare classic rock songs in the Christmas music canon is “Holiday Road” by Lindsey Buckingham. The tune in question is fun. However, it doesn’t deserve a place on any Christmas playlist.

‘Holiday Road’ by Lindsey Buckingham is about a summer vacation

Firstly, some background. After Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” became a hit in the 1990s, the canon of holiday music was almost completely closed for about 20 years. During that time, radio programmers never took to new songs. However, they tried to add some older songs with dubious connections to Christmas to their holiday playlists.

One of these tunes was Madonna’s “Holiday.” The track in question sounds summery and has nothing to do with Yuletide. Even more popular was Buckingham’s “Holiday Road.” The track has nothing to do with Christmas either. In fact, the tune comes from National Lampoon’s Vacation, a movie about a summer road trip. 

‘Holiday Road’ is associated with a movie that might be too iconic for its own good

If National Lampoon’s Vacation was just another forgettable 1980s comedy, it would be easy to recontextualize it as a Christmas song. However, National Lampoon’s Vacation is iconic. Some of the jokes will pop up in your head years after you’ve seen it. Therefore, it’s hard to connect “Holiday Road” to anything besides Clark W. Griswold and his Wagon Queen Family Truckster.

National Lampoon’s Vacation had a sequel called National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Perhaps that film created a false association between “Holiday Road” and Christmas. However, “Holiday Road” does not appear in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

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What Lindsey Buckingham was thinking when he wrote the song

During a 2018 interview with Stereogum, Buckingham discussed getting the assignment to write “Holiday Road.” “It often happens though when you’re doing something where you perceive that the stakes are quite low, when you’re doing something that’s outside of your basic wheelhouse,” he said. “[Director] Harold Ramis called me up and asked me if I would write a beginning and a second song to go over the credits, which was ‘Dancin’ Across the USA,’ my attempt at recreating the Mills Brothers. It’s one of those things, you almost want to say, ‘I don’t do that.’ It wasn’t part of my discipline. I wasn’t sure I could do it, but that was also freeing because he wanted me to try.”

Buckingham recalled Ramis’ reaction to the track. “We came up with this thing, and I remember very clearly him coming out to the studio with a couple of his people, producers, Matty [Simmons], I think, and listening to this song for the first time,” he said. “He was literally blown away at how effective it was and how some of the subject matter, without me even having seen the film, was addressed.”

“Holiday Road” became one of Buckingham’s only hits without Fleetwood Mac. On top of that, holiday songs seem to live forever. For that reason, it’s entirely possible that all of his solo music — and even all of Fleetwood Mac’s music — will fade into the ether while “Holiday Road” remains a seasonal favorite. That’s bizarre. And it’s all because people don’t seem to understand that Buckingham used the word “holiday” in the British sense to refer to a vacation.

“Holiday Road” works great as a song for National Lampoon’s Vacation — and poorly as a song for Christmas.

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