Struggling post-punk band the Waitresses dragged themselves off the road and into a Manhattan studio to record - of all things - a Christmas song on a hot August day in 1981. Little did they know they were about to create a classic - a song that would well outlive the band, the 80s and, sadly, the frontwoman who sang it. 

"I go back and I try to think of what the original inspiration was. I think it was just very much that for years I hated Christmas," says Hoboken resident Chris Butler, founder of the Waitresses and writer of the bittersweet, cool but sentimental Christmas Wrapping.