A Catalan holiday song that has become world famous - yet many people completely misunderstand it
- Panna
- Feb 10
- 2 min read
"El 25 de desembre fum, fum, fum" is a well-known Catalan Christmas carol, translated into several languages, and even has a Chinese version. December 25th arrives, and the refrain, "fum, fum, fum", comes naturally. Everyone knows it, especially in Barcelona. For decades, the same collective mental image has appeared before people's eyes when they hear this song: a smoking chimney (fum in Catalan) on a cold winter's evening. However, folk etymology has played a trick on us. Here, fum has a completely different meaning: it is actually a refined swear word!
Simply put, it's roughly equivalent to saying "Wow!" or "Good heavens!" to avoid the more offensive term in a religious setting. After all, this song was also sung in church.
But how did a swear word end up in a Catalan holiday song? To understand, we have to go back 300 years. Back then, Christmas wasn't the serious, family-oriented holiday we know today; it was more like Carnival.
The documented origin takes us to Prats de Lluçanès. This tradition was first recorded in 1904: shepherds came down from the mountains on Christmas Day and sang the so-called "song of lies" in the church there.
Between verses, the shepherds took the opportunity to satirically voice the follies, inventions, or pranks of the villagers. Whenever they made a sarcastic remark or exaggerated, they would end with the refrain: "fot, fot, fot" (or its softer version, "fum, fum, fum"), as if to say "wow!" or "are you kidding me!"
It was musician Joaquim Pecanins who, while documenting the piece, decided to keep the sweetened version ("fum") so that the song could reach beyond the mountains of Lluçanès. And his risk-taking paid off very well.
By 1922, the Christmas carol was being published in English by major international publishers. Today, the song about mischievous shepherds who mock their neighbors is sung in dozens of languages, translated into English, and even adapted into Chinese. So this year, when you sing the chorus, remember that you’re not singing to the fireplace, but celebrating the most satirical and rebellious spirit of Catalan popular culture.
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