“Fairytale of New York” always reminds me of the J.P Donleavy novel of the same name. The book must have been the inspiration for the song?
MacGowan had decided to name the song after J. P. Donleavy's 1973 novel A Fairy Tale of New York, which Finer was reading at the time and had left lying around the recording studio.
See first sentence after indented paragraph within the division labeled: Background and song development