‘Glee’ season 5 song spoilers: Lea Michele, Chris Colfer, Naya Rivera, and a Santa Claus anthem

Is there a more iconic tribute to the Jolly Man in Red than “Here Comes Santa Claus”? This is one of those songs that you’ve probably heard about a trillion times in your life, with most of these occasions happening at various department stores while you’re trying to figure out what to buy your friend at the last minute.

Given that this is one of the few popular Christmas songs that “Glee” hasn’t covered already, it’s going to be one that is featured on Thursday night’s “Previously Unaired Christmas” episode. Our verdict on it? If you’re judging this purely on vocal performance, than kudos to Lea Michele, Chris Colfer, and Naya Rivera for making Rachel, Kurt, and Santana sound like they are very excited to sing this song. But the arrangement? It’s off … and it sounds really cheesy, like some sort of mall DJ created it. We would have much preferred that the show went with something traditional for the backing track here, given that you have three people with pretty classic voices singing it. We do like to see “Glee” remake songs, but this isn’t quite what we had in mind.

Maybe we are just being a Grinch on this subject just because of our own personal disdain for the idea of a Christmas episode that makes no sense to the story at all, but this is going to be an episode above all others that really needs to convince us that it is worth watching and enjoying. Part of that responsibility will go to the writers on selling this, and making us believe that there is something interesting to see from the three aforementioned characters working as elves for a local mall.

As for some other music from this episode, we can at least stand behind the statement that this song is still far better than the recent cover of “The Chipmunk Song” … which sounds so much like the original that we would never be able to tell them apart.

Photo: Fox