The story behind I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday
I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday is a wish against the calendar, sung at glam rock volume. Roy Wood wrote it and recorded it in 1973 with Wizzard. A children's choir sings at the end, which turns a grown band's excess into something a school can join. The title's spelling is part of the identity. Wood used Everyday as one word, and that is the name the song carries, even though singers often pronounce the wish as every day in ordinary speech. The feeling is simple. Do not pack the lights away.
The record is a British seasonal classic that returns to the charts most Decembers without ever having sat at number one in its first life. It reached number four, which in the mythology of UK Christmas is close enough to become permanent. Wood's love of Spector scale, saxophones, and cheerful noise found its most public home here. People who cannot name another Wizzard song can sing this chorus. That is both a compliment and a slightly unfair summary of a band. The chorus earned it.
History and origins
Wood, already famous from the Move and a founder of Electric Light Orchestra before leaving to form Wizzard, cut the basic track in the summer of 1973 and dressed the studio like Christmas in August. An engineer has recalled decorations and the air turned cold so the season would feel true out of season. That studio game fits the lyric. If you want it to be Christmas every day, you start by making a hot month play along. The single arrived for the real December and climbed to number four in the UK, kept from the very top but lodged in the national ear. A choir from Stockland Green school in Birmingham supplied the children's voices on the original, with additional playful credits on the sleeve for extra noises.
The afterlife of the tape is unusually technical. The original master went missing, and a 1981 rerecording, with Wood playing the parts and a different children's choir, from Kempsey, became the version many later broadcasts used. Arguments among the people who were there continue about which voices are on the record listeners think they know. The practical fact for an audience is simpler and still interesting. A lost tape forced a second performance, and the wish was strong enough to survive the swap. Children's voices, whichever classroom they came from, remain essential. The song without them is a glam track. With them, it is a civic one.
Through the 1980s and on, the single became a December regular, reappearing on the chart as physical reissues and then as downloads and streams. It sits in the same British seasonal drawer as other glam and post glam greetings, but Wood's record is the most purely excessive of the wishful ones. He has a sax section where other songs have a wink. The choir is not ironic. That sincerity inside a ridiculous sound is the Wizzard method. You are allowed to grin at the wall of noise and still mean the wish when the children come in.
Covers and television uses have kept the song busy, but the voice people imitate is still Wood's, slightly wild and pleased with the racket. The spelling Everyday continues to catch editors who want to correct it into two words. Leaving the title as Wood printed it is a small act of discographical manners. The wish itself is not complicated by that spelling. It is the oldest holiday feeling there is, the desire that a good day not be only one day, dressed in 1973 Birmingham glitter and handed to a choir.
Full lyrics
Excerpt
I wish it could be Christmas every day
When the kids start singing and the band begins to play
The lines above are a short excerpt for identification and study. The full lyric is still under copyright. Replace this block with a licensed copy if you have the right to print the complete text.
Lyrics presented for educational and personal use. Sing along responsibly this holiday season!
Meaning and symbolism
The meaning is extension. Christmas, in ordinary time, is a deadline. It arrives, it peaks, it is cleared off the calendar so January can do its work. Wood's lyric objects to the clearing. He wants the social warmth, the music, and the childlike part of the day to be ordinary life. That objection is not a policy. It is a pop feeling, and pop is allowed to want impossible calendars. The children's choir endorses the impossibility. Adults know the tree comes down. The kids in the chorus are hired to disagree.
Glam's meaning is in the sound as much as in the grammar. A wish this simple could have been a quiet folk song. Wood makes it a parade, which argues that joy should be public and a little too much. The Spector lineage is again nearby, as it was for Elton John's single the same winter. Wood's version is scruffier, more carnival, more Midlands. The two 1973 records together say that British pop's answer to American Christmas maximalism was to put on brighter clothes and invite a crowd. Everyday, one word, is the crowd refusing to go home.
Fun facts and statistics
- Roy Wood wrote and recorded I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday with Wizzard in 1973.
- The title uses Everyday as one word, which is the spelling Wood used.
- A children's choir sings on the record, originally pupils from Stockland Green school in Birmingham.
- The single reached number four in the UK and returns to the charts most Decembers.
- The original master was lost, and a 1981 rerecording with a different choir became the version often heard later.
- The wish is simply that the holiday would not end, delivered as glam rock rather than as a quiet carol.
Top 5 most popular renditions
Wizzard
1973
The original single is the parade in its first street. Wood leads a maximal glam arrangement, and the Stockland Green children carry the wish out of the band and into a choir. It reached number four in Britain and never really left December. The studio story, tracking in summer and decorating the room, fits a lyric that wants the season on an illegal schedule. This is the spelling, the saxophones, and the grin. Later arguments about replacement tapes matter. The 1973 conception is still the song's birth, and the birth was loud on purpose.
Wizzard
Roy Wood
1981
When the original tapes could not be found, Wood rerecorded the song and a new children's choir, from Kempsey, took part in the version tied to that scramble. The episode is a rare case of a hit's physical body going missing while the public still wanted the song. Wood's solution was to play and sing it again rather than to retire the wish. Listeners have debated which children they hear on the copy in front of them. The musical point is stabler than the detective story. The chorus survived a lost master, which is a very practical kind of endurance.
Roy Wood
Wizzard
2007
Later chart reentries of the recording, including twenty first century Decembers when downloads pushed old singles back into the official list, are part of the performance history. The vocal may be old. The audience is new. Each return teaches another cohort the one word title and the children's entrance. British seasonal radio treats that return as a duty and a pleasure. A song that peaked at number four in 1973 has had a longer public life than many number ones because it was built to be needed again, not merely to win a week. The reentry is a rendition in the social sense: the country sings along once more.
Wizzard
Roy Wood and Wizzard
2013
Anniversary attention around the song's fortieth December brought the choir story back into the news, including former pupils and studio memories about cold rooms and lost tapes. That publicity is a kind of performance too, a retelling that sends people to the record. Wood's association with the track had by then become his widest public handshake. Hearing the single after the backstory does not require the backstory, but the backstory adds affection. A classroom in Birmingham, a bandleader who wanted too much saxophone, and a wish against taking the decorations down: the anniversary simply said all of that out loud again.
Roy Wood and Wizzard
Wizzard
1974
The first winter after the hit tested whether the song was a novelty or a returning friend. British Christmas pop often dies when the shops take down the display. This one showed, early, that it would be invited back. The choir hook and the plain wish were the reasons. You can forget a complicated story song. You do not forget a room full of children and a band asking for the day to repeat. The 1974 season is the beginning of the tradition the charts still act out. Wizzard had released a single. The country began the longer work of keeping it.
Wizzard
Sheet music
A placeholder stands in the frame below. Swap the image for a licensed page of the score, and point the link at the download you want singers to use.
Notes for singers
If you place I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday in a December service, a school program, or a living room sing, teach Glam rock before you add harmony. A confident melody lets guests enter on the refrain. Say the names when you introduce it. The words are credited to Roy Wood, and the music to Roy Wood. The year to remember is 1973, and the place to name is Birmingham.
This sits in the library as a popular song. Let that tradition set the tempo. A lullaby loses its point if it is hurried. A dance carol loses its point if every syllable is precious. Leave a breath at the end of the verse so the next line feels chosen rather than chased.
Roy Wood wrote and recorded I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday with Wizzard in 1973. Hold that fact in the introduction you speak, not only in a program note. The title uses Everyday as one word, which is the spelling Wood used. Those two details give a listener a reason to hear the song as a made thing, not as wallpaper.
When the group is small, one voice can carry the verse and everyone can take the refrain. When the group is a choir, decide in advance whether you are telling a story or painting a picture. Story songs want clear words. Picture songs can bloom. I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday will tell you which it is after a single unaccompanied read through.
Questions readers ask
Because that is the spelling Roy Wood used for the 1973 Wizzard single. In ordinary speech people say every day as two words, and the sung line is often heard that way. The official title, the one on the record, is Everyday as a single word. Keeping that spelling is how you refer to this song rather than to a generic sentence. It is a small distinction and a real one. The wish is unchanged by it. The name is not.
A children's choir. On the original 1973 recording, pupils from Stockland Green school in Birmingham took part. After the master tape was lost, a 1981 rerecording involved children from Kempsey, and there has been public discussion about which voices are on the versions people hear now. The musical fact that matters in the room is that children carry the last wish. The song is built to hand the extravagance to them. A cover that omits that handoff has changed the piece.
It reached number four in the UK in the winter of 1973 and into 1974, which is a major hit even though it is not the top spot. Its longer fame comes from returning almost every December. Some number one Christmas singles are locked to their year. This one became part of the season's furniture without that first place crown. The chorus is why. It states a feeling people are ready to repeat, and the record gives them a choir to repeat it with.
Elton John's Step Into Christmas is the elegant invitation from the same season, also aware of Phil Spector's scale. Wood's record is the carnival version, scruffier and more determined to be too much, with children as the final authority. Both are British glam answers to a big American production idea. They are friends, not copies. If John's song opens a door, Wood's tries to keep the party from ever ending. Programming them together makes that difference obvious and pleasant.
Why this song endures
The song endures because British December built a canon of returning singles, and this one has the most self explanatory chorus in that canon. You do not need the plot. You need the wish. Chart reentries trained a later public to expect it the way they expect lights in the high street. The lost tape and the second choir add a backstage legend that fans enjoy and casual listeners never need. What both audiences share is the children's last word. A glam record that ends in a classroom has a way of sounding like a whole town.
It also endures as Roy Wood's handshake with people who do not collect his other work. That can be annoying to a serious fan and still be a fair legacy. He built a seasonal machine, spelled its name his way, and let children live inside it. Every time the track returns, the impossible calendar gets another vote. January always wins. The song's job is not to defeat January. It is to make the objection loud, joyful, and communal before the ornaments go back in the box.