A Hazy Shade of Winter by Simon and Garfunkel—Murfin Winter Holidays Music Festival 2025-26

                                                                    Simon and Garfunkel's A Hazy Shade of Winter. 

It’s a mystery. Why do some non-holiday Winter songs get included in Christmas music play lists and others don’t?  Is it because they aren’t perky with a catchy hook, full of romance, or a clever novelty tune?  Take, for example, Simon and Garfunkel’s A Hazy Shade of Winter. 

The 1966 single sleeve for A Hazy Shade of Winter.

Despite being the second biggest hit off the duo’s landmark 1968 album Bookends peaking at # 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 after Mrs. Robinson which reached #1, you won’t find the song on Yule radio.  Maybe it’s because it is a rather gloomy take on the season—dull overcast urban sky, only patchy snow among long-dead leaves on the ground.  And it even mentions a synagogue down by the river instead of a pristine chapel by a Currier & Ives lane.  That can’t help.  But any fair assessment of all the moods of the season should be included like Christina Rossetti’s In the Bleak Midwinter.  

The Bangles had an even bigger hit with the song in the '80s.

This classic was also a #3 hit for The Bangles in the 1980’s.