The Billboard Said It First

In December 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono rented advertising space on billboards in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Tokyo, Rome, and Berlin. The message was plain: "War is over! If you want it! Happy Christmas from John & Yoko." The United States was still deep in Vietnam, and Lennon wanted people to feel the weight of their own complicity. He’d explain it himself later: It says: ’War is over if you want it.’ That was still the same message—the idea that we are as responsible as the man pressing the buttons. As long as people think that it’s being done to them and that they have no power, they have no power.

Two years after those billboards went up, the slogan became a song. Happy Xmas (War Is Over) was released as a single in the US on December 1, 1971, and it’s been a fixture of the season ever since. The Fray’s 2006 online version was the first to crack the Billboard Hot 100—the first time the track had ever made that chart—and since then barely a December passes without someone taking a new run at it.

The latest version comes from Miley Cyrus, Mark Ronson, and Sean Ono Lennon, performed together on Saturday Night Live. They got it right. The song still has its soul intact—that minor-key choir line underneath, the children’s voices, the patient way the melody refuses to be cheerful no matter how much you dress it up. Ronson is meticulous about production and Cyrus has the kind of voice that doesn’t need ornamentation. Sean being there matters in a way that’s hard to articulate without tipping into sentiment. He’s carrying something his father left behind, and he does it with enough restraint that it never becomes tribute-act territory. John Lennon wrote a song about collective responsibility and wrapped it in a Christmas coat. More than fifty years on, the coat still fits.