10 Phenomenal Christmas Piano Songs to Warm Your Heart this Holiday Season

Last Updated on July 10, 2022 by Rebecca

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Need to set the mood this Christmas? Nothing evokes the Christmas spirit better than a good Christmas song. And what could be better than some beautiful Christmas piano solos?

The songs on this list are all songs that I really love come Christmas time. For each song, I've paired a vocal version with a piano version, so you can experience both! So grab your favourite pair of headphones, plug in your Christmas tree, and curl up under a blanket with some hot cocoa while you give these wonderful Christmas songs a listen!

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1) It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

I have a strange obsession with sad music. Not miserable music, just music that sounds sad in a pretty way. There's just a certain special quality to a beautifully sad song. So you can see why I would love the Christmas song “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.”

And the fact that Sixpence None the Richer took a song that already has a bit of sad flair to it, and put their own special twist on it to make it sound downright melancholy… icing on the cake for my ears! I love it!

Of course, I wasn't able to find a piano solo for the Sixpence None the Richer version, so the piano solo is an instrumental rendition of the traditional version. Kaleb Brasee's playing really captures the peaceful “snowflakes drifting in the still midnight air” feeling this song is meant to have.

2) Feliz Navidad

Vocal Version

Piano Version

Oh man, my poor mother!

I loved this song as a child! And I mean really loved it!

My mom had a Boney M Christmas cassette tape when I was young. And little 5-year-old me loved this song more than anything else in all of December. I remember the radio being on top of the fridge where I couldn't reach it one year. And I remember climbing up onto a chair to rewind the tape every few minutes so I could play this song on repeat.

I'm not sure why (or how!) my mom put up with that, but it made me very happy! And now as an adult, this song is full of nostalgic warm fuzzies for me!

Jan Gajdosik's piano performance starts out really delicate, like tiny bells, then it ramps up to a really full and bouncy sound that matches the celebratory tone the song usually conveys.

3) Mary's Boy Child

This year, my boyfriend and I had Spotify playing a Christmas playlist while we decorated our tree. When this song came on, he reached for his phone to skip it, and I just about dropped my ornaments in my hurry to yell, “No! That song is my jam! Put it back on!“

He looked at me like I had grown an extra head, but he put the song back on for me.

I don't know what baffled me more, the fact that he had never heard this song before or the fact that he thought it would be acceptable to skip it!

I'm not sure exactly why I love this song so much (aside from the obvious Boney M memories from my childhood), but it's just such a fun song! It's impossible to listen to this song without a smile on your face! And Larissa Kleinert's piano performance of the piece is great!

4) Mary Did You Know?

I actually didn't know this song existed until about two years ago, when I stumbled upon this Pentatonix version. (Actually, I think this song was also the first time I discovered Pentatonix.) If I remember correctly, it was a Spotify playlist that introduced me to it. And it has since become one of my favourite Christmas songs.

Given my obsession with sad-sounding songs, are you surprised?

Jason Frisk has chosen a wonderful arrangement of the song and played it beautifully!

5) The Christmas Song

Is it really Christmas time without this song? And I love how no matter how many versions I hear of this song, it's still Nat King Cole's voice I hear in my head when I'm humming this song to myself.

Finding a piano performance that really captured the essence of this song was a bit of a challenge. Many of the performances I found were played with a very straight rhythm, and the song just doesn't feel right without a slight swing. David Escher's performance does a fantastic job of infusing the perfect amount of swing to make the piece feel exactly as it should!

6) Do You Hear What I Hear?

Finding a vocal version of this song that satisfied me was a real challenge. I think because I only discovered this song a couple years ago, and after hearing it a few times, it got stuck in my head and became my own version. I do like Carrie Underwood's version though.

And Phillip Mill's piano version is magnificent!

7) God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

I first discovered this song when I was the Sunday organist at a couple churches in my hometown as a teenager. As you can imagine, the sad-sounding melodrama of the sound made me fall absolutely in love with the song.

It's hard for me to find a version online that I like, since my first experiences of it were in a live sing-along setting, but for me, the Pentatonix version does a good job of capturing the brooding mood that is essential to this song.

The piano solo by Ammaron Vahai is exquisite. It really makes the song sound almost heart-breaking, in the most beautiful way.

8) I'll Be Home for Christmas

This song feels extra special to me this year because I'll live far from home and this Christmas I'm finally going to see my family for the first time in almost a year and a half. And I get to meet my niece for the first time! The Martina McBride version is the one I always hear in my head. Her voice is like butter, for real!

Neil Archer's piano performance is magnificent. He's an incredibly talented pianist with a ton of piano videos on his channel. Definitely worth checking him out!

9) O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

This is another song I originally discovered during my stint as a church organist.

I hated it at first.

The version in the hymnal had no time signature and no bars, so it was left completely up to me to figure out some kind of logical feeling of meter to go with it. But over time, the haunting melody wormed its way into my heart, and now it's one of my favourites!

I had a bit of a hard time finding a vocal version I really liked online, but this performance by Anna Hawkins is amazing. I wish I understood the parts that are in Hebrew (this is one version I won't be singing along with in my head!), but the way she captures the hauntingly beautiful essence of the song is truly incomparable.

And what would a list of piano solos be without a performance by The Piano Guys? Their rendition of O Come, O Come Emmanuel is fantastic. I love how the piano and the cello keep switching off between the melody and harmony roles.

10) O Holy Night

Of all the Christmas songs I play on the piano, O Holy Night is my boyfriend's favourite. I'll be playing some other Christmas song, and he'll walk in and say, “Play my song!” He loves the way the song ramps up the intensity at the “fall on your knees” part. (And who can blame him? That part is magnificent!)

The Peter Hollens a cappella version is fantastic. Which is surprising, since I tend to hear this song in my head as a woman's voice. Nevertheless, I love his version of the song! He's got a lot of excellent videos on his YouTube channel. It's definitely worth checking out.

For the piano version, I included my own performance of the song (now you can hear exactly what my boyfriend hears!).

The arrangement I'm playing is from the book Adult Piano Adventures Christmas Book 2, by Nancy and Randall Faber. I love this book because the arrangements are simple enough to be really easy for me, and perfectly accessible for late-beginners, but they sound full and rich enough to be really satisfying. (Meaning you don't feel like you're playing baby-music!)

So I decided to create an entire playlist of Christmas piano performances featuring the arrangements from this book to help spread some holiday cheer this year. If you'd like to hear for yourself how the arrangements sound, you can head over to YouTube and listen to my Christmas playlist.

And if you'd like to play these songs yourself, you can find the Adult Piano Adventures Christmas Book 2 on Amazon. And if you think these arrangements are just a little too hard for you yet, you might enjoy the Adult Piano Adventures Christmas Book 1. My students love playing the songs from both these books.

Related Christmas Piano Posts:

• 5 Christmas Chord Progressions to Improve Your Improvisation Skills Any Day of the Year will help you learn the chords for 5 popular Christmas songs, and help you learn how you can borrow the chord progressions to improvise your own unique piano music.
• How to Build Any Piano Triad in Seconds will teach you everything you need to know in order to understand basic piano triads.
• How to Practice Piano Chords will teach you 5 techniques (and provide 3 free resources!) that will help you improve your chord skills.

Share Your Thoughts

What's your favourite performance from this list? Do you prefer the vocal versions or the piano versions? And do you have a favourite Christmas song you wish I had included? (Let me know in the comments below and maybe I'll include it in a list next year!)