Which Christmas song is your halls?

Festivities never really start until mid-December, when you’re already well bored of hearing Christmas songs. Dismissive as we might often be of these classics, they no doubt bring to mind a certain image when you listen to them. For me, they evoke Cardiff University Halls of Residence…

Taly North – I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day

Taly northers wish it could be Christmas every day so they could be sitting at home on a sofa, rather than trying to organise a pres in a tiny kitchen during term time.

Taly South – Do They Know it’s Christmas

Bono, Sting, George Michael. Everyone thinks they’re the biggest chicken in the nest. Home to many a wannabe BNOC and a few more fledgling coke habits, spend an hour in Taly South and someone will tell you tales about when they went to help those poor African children on their gap year.

Taly Gate – All I Want for Christmas is You

They say they don’t want a lot for Christmas, but when mummy doesn’t get them a pony, a fiat 500 and tickets to Bali you can be sure they’ll have a diva moment and not join in with charades.

All they really want is maccies and big Tesco. All you want for Christmas is to make friends with one of them to live the surrogate life of luxury.

Taly Court – Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree

Owing to the fact you can actually fit one in a Taly Court lounge, you’ll see these specimens through their overly large windows. Court’s architecture is fairly modern, but in a new old fashioned way.

Uni Halls – Lonely This Christmas

If you had to get a bus every time you wanted to go anywhere, you’d be lonely too.

Senghennydd Hall – Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

Nobody really gives Hall a chance. They’re all on their own, not part of the halls vibe. All the other halls laugh and call them names. But every so often you hear a story about them, and once you let them prove their worth, you realise that yes, they are worthy of flying the present-laden sleigh that is being a proper halls.

Senghennydd Court – Christmas Time (Don’t Let the Bells End)

The outcast halls, dressed all silly and not quite taking things seriously. For a night out you head into the Darkness dressed in a shiny leotard and singing songs with silly innuendos in them. Good thing is, nobody minds. Sure, you’ll go off the rails in a couple of years, but you’re a lot of fun, and not even that bad.

Colum Halls – Fairytale of New York

Living on Colum Road, having the drunken hordes stream past you twice a week, every week, can really make you hate people. By Christmas you’ve had enough. You’ve drunk a bottle of Lidl spirits and you’re trading insults with a passer-by from the safety of your fourth floor window. Minutes later the argument has drained you. As you realise its futility, you go out to the street, embrace each other, and simply revel in the drunken glory of Christmas.

Roy Jenkins – Santa Claus is Coming To Town (Jackson 5 version)

If there’s anything Roy Jenkins has got going for them, it’s that Crwys Road is actually sort of in town. So grimy are the kitchens that it’s impossible to cook, and you resort to making the Deliveroo driver your own personal santa. So thin are the walls, your flatmates know when you’re sleeping and they know when you’re awake

Cartwright Court – Santa Claus is Coming To Town (Justin Bieber version)

Bet you didn’t even know Biebs had done a version of this song, just like you didn’t know Cartwright Court existed. In most respects it’s pretty similar to Roy Jenkins, out of the way of most other halls over the other side of Cathays. At least there’s sinks in the bedrooms if it gets a bit too cringe.

Aberconway Hall – The Climb, Joe McElderry’s failed Christmas number one

Insatiably commercial., and in theory you’ve got everything going for you. Closer than Taly to town, right next to a library. Unfortunately there’s just no spark, and you always lose out to the more rebellious people across the road.

Colum Road houses – Killing in the Name – Rage Against the Machine

“Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me” – and you don’t have to. You’ve got a house. Sure it’s basically halls, but what matters is now you’re independent. Not like those losers in actual halls. It’s a tiny act of rebellion, yet a huge victory against the system. That is until you realise, just like both of the songs were owned by the same record label, you’re paying rent to the uni just like everyone else.

Aberdare Hall – Christmas Wrapping -Spice Girls

Girl power rules here. You’re cosmopolitan, living as close to town as a halls can get, and with your meals cooked for you, you’re already living the high life.

Private Accomodation – Auld Lang Syne

You were too late and by the time you got your act together all the proper halls are already gone, everyone’s moved on. Christmas has passed and you’ve just managed to catch the tail end of the festive period, but as you’re singing a traditional New Years’ Eve song you realise you don’t really fit in. “Should old acquaintance be forgot” you wail, as Taly dwellers you think are your friends can only remember you as that weirdo in private halls.