Songfacts®:

• This is a single and the one original composition from A Christmas Cornucopia, Scottish singer-songwriter Annie Lennox' first Christmas album.
• Lennox explained the inspiration behind this song: "It's really strange. I hadn't been writing any songs for a long time. Then this title popped into my head – I didn't even know it was a title. It was just two words… Safety, security, access to medical care, to love, protection, education, a future, a decent place to live – a child must have all these things. In the Western countries this tends to be taken for granted. In developing countries it's a different story.
  The abuse of children is just… everywhere," she added with a shake of her head. "It truly is. I've been to rape crisis centers, I know what's going on."
• The singer donated all the royalties from this song to The Annie Lennox Foundation.
• Lennox was herself a Christmas child. She was born on December 25, 1954.
• This song marked Lennox's first new material since 2007's Songs of Mass Destruction. However, in an interview with Spinner the Scottish singer explained she wasn't planning on writing a new song for A Christmas Cornucopia: "I was planning on recording these carols, but one day, I had a title that had been going around in my mind, 'Universal Child,' and I was like 'what is that?' During a break, I was playing on a keyboard and all of a sudden, some chords came and a melody. It's like a chicken laying an egg."