The italian christmas donkey

How it works

How it works is a 45-rpm joke. Lou Monte, born Louis Scaglione in 1917 and later a New Jersey Italian-American singer, recorded “Dominick the Donkey (The Italian Christmas Donkey)” for Roulette Records in 1960. Ray Allen, Sam Saltzberg, and Wandra Merrell wrote it. Joe Reisman’s orchestra and chorus are on the disc. The B-side is “Christmas At Our House.” Billboard listed the A-side at number 14 on the Bubbling Under the Hot 100 in December 1960.

The plot is simple on purpose. Santa has a donkey named Dominick. The reindeer, the song says, cannot climb the hills of Italy, so Dominick hauls gifts to Santa’s paesans. The presents in the lyric are “made in Brooklyn.” That geography is the tell. The record is an Italian-American Christmas novelty from the New York–New Jersey world, not a traditional carol collected in Umbria or Campania. People in Italy often have no idea it exists. That is not a failing of Italy. It is the song living where it was cut.

In December 2011 the same recording reached number 3 on the UK singles chart after BBC Radio 1’s Chris Moyles pushed a download campaign. A 1960 U.S. novelty becoming a British Christmas spike fifty-one years later is a chart fact, not proof of a hidden Italian rite.

What the 1960 record is not

It is not the ox and the donkey in an Italian presepe. Those two animals stand by the manger in nativity scenes across Italy even though the canonical birth narratives in Luke and Matthew do not name them. The pairing is old Christian iconography. Francis of Assisi’s 1223 Greccio nativity used a manger, an ox, and a donkey. That donkey is a silent figure in a crèche. He does not wear a mayor’s derby. He does not need a reindeer work rule. Put him on a table on Christmas Eve. Do not queue him with Dominick.

It is also not Santa Lucia’s donkey in parts of northern Italy. On the night of 12–13 December, some children leave food for Lucia and hay for her donkey, often called Gastaldo. That custom belongs to 13 December, not to 25 December, and not to a Roulette B-side. Three donkeys, three jobs, three dates. A trivia night that merges them will crown the wrong animal.

Song: “Dominick the Donkey (The Italian Christmas Donkey),” Lou Monte, 1960, Roulette. Writers: Ray Allen, Sam Saltzberg, Wandra Merrell. Setting in the lyric: Italy’s hills, gifts labelled Brooklyn. UK chart peak: number 3, Christmas 2011.

Not the presepe donkey, not Lucia’s donkey. If the donkey’s job is to out-climb flying reindeer, you are listening to New Jersey. If his job is to stand by a manger, you are looking at a presepe.

When to play it, and when to skip it

Play it in December if your household already knows the hee-haw chorus and wants that noise. Christmas 2026 is Friday 25 December. The song does not move the feast. It does not close a bank. It does not replace Midnight Mass, a fish supper on Christmas Eve, or a nativity on the sideboard. It is optional kitsch with a specific diaspora accent.

Skip it if you went looking for an Italian folk explanation of a donkey at Christmas and landed here by the subtitle. The folk explanation is the presepe, Greccio, and sometimes Lucia in early December. The subtitle is marketing on a 45. Both can sit in the same winter. They should not share a biography.

Monte died in 1989. The recording is still the recording. Later stereo mixes and compilation albums are reissues, not a second origin. If a streaming tile prints 1959 or 1961, believe the 1960 Roulette release date used on the original 7-inch. The donkey in the lyric still cannot replace 25 December, and 25 December still does not require a donkey.