Songfacts®:

• Coldplay aren't particularly known for Christmas music, so it makes sense that their Christmas song bypasses the sleigh bells and yule logs and deals with emotional upheaval during the holiday season. "Christmas Lights" details a heated argument which drives Coldplay frontman Chris Martin's lover away, following which he wanders down London's Oxford Street. Surrounded by the glow of festive lights, he discovers a quiet solace in their shimmer - a reminder of resilience and the hope that brighter days might still lie ahead.
  
  The song was released as a standalone single on December 1, 2010, as a digital download. According to the band's website, the mid-tempo number is "in the key of G."
• Mat Whitecross directed the video for the song, which was filmed at the South Bank of River Thames in London. The band are seen performing the song on a small theater-inspired stage with red velvet curtains.
  
  "The idea for the video was like a magical, surreal theater show with loads of tricks packed in," frontman Chris Martin said.
  
  A trio of Elvis Presley impersonators are seen playing violins - they are the band's former manager Phil Harvey, Tim Crompton, the frontman of Coldplay support act The High Wire and comic actor Simon Pegg.
  
  The words above the stage curtain in the video say CREDO ELVEM ETIAM VIVERE. This means "I believe Elvis lives" in Latin.
• Coldplay started working on this song in December 2008. Their song "Viva La Vida" was a #1 hit that summer, and the band were touring to support the album of the same name at the time. They were so big, they earned a story on the popular American newsmagazine 60 Minutes that aired before the Grammy Awards in February 2009. In that segment, Chris Martin excitedly plays part of a song he's working on, which turned out to be "Christmas Lights." The spend the remainder of 2009 on tour and didn't get around to recording the song until the following year, releasing it for the 2010 Christmas season.
• "Christmas Lights" is one of the few original Christmas songs from the era to get invited back every holiday season. In the '90s we got Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas Is You" and Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24," but there weren't many fresh Christmas songs from the '00s that have stuck around. "Christmas Lights" caught on right away, going to #25 in the US and #13 in the UK when it was released in 2010. The only original Christmas song that charted higher in America in the 2010s was Kelly Clarkson's "Underneath the Tree," which went to #11. In the UK, "When Christmas Comes Around" by Matt Terry reached #3 in 2016.
• This wasn't Coldplay's first foray into Christmas music. In 2001 they covered "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" and sent it to fan club members. A performance of that song was released as the B-side of the vinyl version of "Christmas Lights."