MTV crashed onto the scene in the summer of 1981, elbowing conventional Top 40 radio aside as quickly as cable systems picked up the new channel.
That happened later than sooner where I lived*, so I missed out on MTV’s first Christmas.
It wasn’t until Christmas time in 1982 that I saw this for the first time.
“Christmas Is The Time To Say I Love You” was written and performed by Billy Squier and initially released in November 1981 as the B side to his hit single “My Kinda Lover.”
Within a month, he’d recorded this video live with “The MTV Chorus,” a sing-along group that included MTV VJs and staff members, along with a bunch of New York and Philadelphia radio and record people, all gleefully lip-syncing.
Who could forget these lyrics? “From grownup to minor/No one could be finer” and “From rooftop to chimney/From Harlem to Bimini.”
It’s a guilty pleasure, perhaps even corny, but it’s a good memory from that time.
“(That was) No. 1, my top, very favorite MTV moment.”
So says MTV DJ Martha Quinn, who can be seen singing, swinging and swaying away behind Billy Squier in that video from 43 holidays ago.
“If I had to go back in time and revisit one day, like if I could get into the DeLorean and go back to one moment, it probably be this,” she told Lyndsey Parker of Yahoo Music in 2016.
“What you see in that video, it was recorded within months of our launch, and we were all so starry-eyed, such believers. We were rebels with a cause. Everyone you see in that video, they’re the technicians, the secretaries, the executives, the production assistants. We were all one big happy family, fighting for MTV. We believed so strongly in the power of rock ‘n’ roll. And you can really see it there.”
“Christmas Is The Time To Say I Love You” was released as a single in 1981, 1982 and 1983, most often with Squier’s cover of “White Christmas” (which I’ve never heard) on the B side. It’s also been included on countless holiday compilation CDs and records.
Most interesting is the 1982 single release — for jukeboxes only, and I suppose now for collectors and/or completists only — on green vinyl.
* It was late July 1982, almost a year after MTV’s launch, that MTV finally debuted in Green Bay, Wisconsin.