Chris Brown’s Or Donny Hathaway’s?

“This Christmas” is the official Christmas song of Black America. If you disagree, you’re just wrong. In fact, if I walk up to you and say, “Shake a hand; shake a hand; shake a hand,” and you don’t know what I’m talking about, I will assume you’re the Feds.

But there is a debate about which version of the song is superior. Chris Brown’s 2007 cover recorded for the “Black Christmas” movie that shares the name of the song. Or Donny Hathaway’s original released in 1970.

Because the people who make the argument that Breezy’s version is superior are usually born after Black folks were wearing thugged out Bugs Bunny T-shirts, the temptation is to not take them seriously. But let’s not do that. It is easy to see why they think the way they do.

Say what you want about the man who made the record. (To be fair, he was an 18-year-old kid when it dropped.) He may be annoying. He may have beat on women. But that man can sang.  

Brown’s version of “This Christmas” kinda bangs. It is a slickly produced and perfectly sung rendition of the song that is full of swagger. And it came out during a time in Chris Brown’s career when he was still a baby-faced pretty boy who did not have the baggage he does now.

The 2007 version of This Christmas is a good song. Perhaps even very good. It just isn’t great. Because for all the slick production and smooth vocals, it is missing one thing the original has in spades: soul.

In 1970, just months after releasing his debut album, “Everything Is Everything,” Hathaway set his sights on creating something that up to that point hadn’t truly existed: a Christmas anthem for Black America. He hooked up with Nadine McKinnor, who had written the lyrics to what would eventually become “This Christmas” a few years prior. Hathaway orchestrated the arrangement and production, and a holiday classic was born.

What makes this song unique is the undeniable soul Hathaway brings to the record. When he sings, you’re not just listening to a man vocalize. You feel like he is looking in your eyes and saying with his whole heart that he hopes you have a Merry Christmas.

This song has become such a staple in the black community that Imani Perry, he Henry A. Morss, Jr. and Elisabeth W. Morss Professor of Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality at Harvard University,  summed it up to me like this: “[It’s] to Christmas as [Maze’s] “Before I Let Go” is to cookouts and as “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is to Martin Luther King Jr. breakfasts and HBCU graduations.”

So which version is superior? You know the answer. But don’t shade young Black folks because they like Chris Brown’s version. They are mistaken, but they are not put-sugar-in-grits-level wrong.