Songfacts®:

• This is a track from Erasure's first holiday themed album, Snow Globe. The pair resisted the idea of a festive record until they could devise a unique approach. "Everything about Christmas has been written already," said Erasure's keyboardist Vince Clarke. "We thought it would be more interesting to look into the darker side of the season. For a lot of people, Christmas is not a happy time."
• This song finds Andy Bell singing of dark imagery concerning coal, ash and blood, before giving way to the hope of a bright guiding star and three humble gifts. "'Blood on the Snow' was just another sound that kind of came to me really early, probably 3 o'clock in the morning," he explained to The Hollywood Reporter. "I just sang the song into the iPhone -- all the words just came out. I thought afterwards that it was based on the little tin solder story [i.e. Hans Christian Anderson's The Steadfast Tin Soldier]. ... We also tried to capture the essence and innocence of Christmases past, like those old black-and-white movies, It's a Wonderful Life and the original Miracle on 34th St."