About Feliz Navidad

"Feliz Navidad" (Spanish: [fe?liz na?i?ða(ð)]) is a Christmas song written in 1970 by Puerto Rican singer/songwriter José Feliciano. With its simple, heartfelt lyrics—the traditional Spanish Christmas/New Year greeting "Feliz Navidad, próspero año y felicidad" ("Merry Christmas, a prosperous year and happiness") followed by (in English) "I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas from the bottom of my heart"—it has become a pop Christmas classic.

Feliciano says he recorded the song while feeling homesick at Christmas, missing his family in New York and his extended family further afield as he sat in a studio in LA. He remembered celebrating Christmas Eve with his brothers, eating traditional Puerto Rican foods, drinking rum, and going caroling. "It was expressing the joy that I felt on Christmas and the fact that I felt very lonely. I missed my family, I missed Christmas carols with them. I missed the whole Christmas scene", he says.