Songfacts®:

• In 1987, A&M Records released the first in a series of A Very Special Christmas albums to benefit the Special Olympics. Joining a lineup of contemporary acts covering Christmas classics, Bruce Springsteen offered his live version of "Merry Christmas Baby" from a December 28, 1980 concert at Long Island's Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum.
• The bluesy yuletide number first hit the airwaves in 1947 with Johnny Moore's Three Blazers, featuring Charles Brown singing about a lady who gave him a memorable Christmas. Brown reworked a song called "Merry Christmas Blues" by Los Angeles songwriter Lou Baxter and transformed it into an R&B holiday standard, inspiring covers by popular artists like Otis Redding, Chuck Berry, Ike & Tina Turner, Elvis Presley, and B.B. King. Following Springsteen's treatment, with a lead-in from Clarence Clemons' sax, Melissa Etheridge and Christina Aguilera also picked it up on their holiday rosters.
• A Very Special Christmas was a big hit, going Platinum within a couple months of its October release. By 1998, it was certified triple Platinum by the RIAA for 4 million copies sold.
• Springsteen released his eighth studio album, Tunnel Of Love, around the time the Christmas compilation dropped. Influenced by his deteriorating marriage to actress Julianne Phillips, the introspective album trades blue-collar rock anthems for heartache ballads and pop-rock explorations of mature love. With only occasional backing from his E Street Band, Springsteen handled most of the album's parts himself with the help of drum machines and synthesizers. The title track earned him a Grammy Award for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Solo in 1988.
• Springsteen's version was used in the pilot episode ("Arrival" - 2019) of the TV series Hot Zone.
• Springsteen showed his love for Christmas music by staging December shows at New Jersey's Asbury Park and adding some holiday cheer to his lineup with covers of "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" and other staples. But surprisingly, he never released his own Christmas album. While he did toy with the idea of compiling the live Christmas covers for a holiday release, he didn't have enough material for a full-fledged album. The thought of going into the studio in the dead of summer to sing about chestnuts roasting on open fire wasn't an appealing alternative.
  
  "The thing is, you only want to do it around Christmas time, but you don't want to do it then either, because it's around Christmas time and you don't feel like working," he told Jimmy Fallon in 2020. "Then Christmas time goes away and you gotta do it in the summertime when you just don't feel like it. So, we haven't gotten around to it. Maybe one of these days."