It’s Christmas time! Everyone is feeling… tired? Glad they’ve got a break from all the hubbub, less glad about the stilted conversations with family members they can’t avoid?
But aside from all that, Christmas is a time not just to feast on food but also to sample some culture. I’m currently tied up in a losing battle to watch 25 Christmas films in 25 days (I’m currently on 15), but it’s given me a slightly renewed feeling about Crimbo – did you know that The Holiday is actually a pretty good film?
And there’s the usual winter flurry of Christmas music with tunes already on the airwaves in late November (which I think we can all agree is too early).
Music, probably more than films, gets people into the Christmas mood quicker. After all, they’re not ninety minutes long, and you don’t have to sit through adverts or have someone ask what’s going on.
But what if I told you that the best way to hear Christmas music was not through your headphones, wireless speakers, or radios – it might be through your car?
The Christmas music spatial remix
I was invited over to Dolby Studios in Soho on a mid-December day to have a listen to Silent Night, which had been remastered by Swedish car company Polestar in Dolby Atmos.
Don’t worry, this isn’t an op-ed masquerading as a promotional puff piece for an EV car, but part of the experience was listening to tracks both at Dolby’s mixing studios and in a Polestar 3 EV to see how the experience carries over. Spoiler alert – it’s better than you think.
Now, the problem(s) I have with Dolby Atmos Music – and I feel many others have – is that some tracks play well in spatial audio and some are mastered in too subtle a way that doesn’t feel like it’s an upgrade from stereo.
Another is the avenue through which we listen to music – headphones, soundbars, wireless speakers don’t convey the same degree of space and direction as a mixing studio with several dedicated speakers can.
And if you asked me whether a car could do better, I would have said “probably not”. But imagine a car with twenty-five Bowers & Wilkins speakers dotted around its interior, including its famed Tweeter-on-top design, and I’d start to give more credence that perhaps, a car might be the better way to listen to not just music, but 3D spatial audio.
But before I get to that. What makes Christmas so intrinsic to the end-of-year experience? Why does it get people into the mood for celebration?
For that, Polestar enlisted Dr Joe Bennett, musicologist and professor at Berklee College of Music and Sport, to provide his insights on the trends that make Christmas music such yuletide winter warmers.
Family, nostalgia, and heartbreak
Dr Bennett talked about the history of Christmas music, which initially centred on Christian traditions that stemmed from nativity plays, songs such as Silent Night and Joy to the World.
But Silent Night isn’t topping the charts at Christmas in 2025. Christmas songs have become more secular as society has grown more multicultural, with commercial interests influencing popular music trends. From the mid-20th century onwards, Christmas songs began to centre around being at home, love, heartbreak, festive parties, Santa Claus (I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus), weather and nostalgia.
The shift was driven in part by the desire to create music that appeals to everyone. Sorry Silent Night, you aren’t likely to be belted out by Kylie Minogue any time soon.
And of course, there are several cultural references that Christmas songs must feature.
There are sleigh bells, historically used on horse-drawn sleighs for safety during dark winter nights, and now intrinsically linked to Christmas music (though they do feature in The Beach Boys’ God Only Knows).
The sense of gathering, whether around a fire or singing together, is an experience that dates back to the Victorian era; there are mentions of Santa Claus (obviously) as well as snowy weather and sleigh rides to evoke the Christmas spirit.
Perhaps the two biggest contributors to a good Christmas song are nostalgia – a reference to childhood or earlier that creates a sense of comfort and familiarity. And then there’s home and family – the most common themes in modern Christmas songs. The feeling of returning home and family gatherings is the biggest pull that resonates with listeners on an emotional level.
Most modern tracks include the promise of love and romance; heartbreak and longing (Wham’s Last Christmas), festive parties and celebrations. If you want to be a chart-topper for Christmas, you’ve got to include some of these.
Christmas delivered in 3D audio
So we’ve established the trends behind a Christmas track, but why listen to a track in spatial audio?
There is a greater sense of space that spatial audio, such as Dolby Atmos, can afford to music in general. Instruments and vocals are given more room to breathe, and arguably that helps in terms of picking out smaller details. Rather than layered on top of one another or competing for attention – with more room, the clarity and detail of those sleigh bells can ring out better.
So while Silent Night isn’t the most complex Christmas track out there, comparing the sound of it in Dolby’s state-of-the-art studio to a car, and while they’re not the same, it’s several steps up from listening to it with a pair of headphones or through a wireless speaker.
Having twenty-five speakers hidden away in the car interior helps, those specific positions can better reproduce the positions of speakers in a mixing room. And twenty-five speakers is certainly better than a couple of drivers.
So while the level of resolution, power and detail isn’t the same, it’s the sense of space that listening to spatial audio in the Polestar 3 that impressed. You can hear sounds from the front, to the sides and behind you – you’re surrounded by sound in the same way you’d be sitting at a mixing desk.
I’ve heard stories of music artists taking their tracks and listening to them in the car because that’s where they felt people would likely hear them first. If it sounded good in the car, they’d know it’d work elsewhere.
With cars that now feature Dolby Atmos sound, it seems as if that still rings true with spatial audio. Ensconced in a cocoon of sound, if spatial audio really takes off, your car might be the best way to hear it.
Though you would need a spare £70,000 for the Polestar 3. But if you already have one with the Bowers & Wilkins speakers, it might be a nice fortress of solitude from the family during the festive break, where you can listen to your favourite Christmas tracks in peace.
