Christmas Music

I love Christmas music. ...it is one of my favorite things about the holiday season. I can still here the click and drop of each album on the stereo record player......I along with my sibs, we knew the song order of every record.  Growing up we had a huge stack of records placed on the stereo record player every day, year after year....and it played over and over. We probably wore out the records. The music wasn't allowed to start until November 1st, but we sometimes would sneak it in here and there in October.  With the coming of tapes and CD's things have changed a bit,  but the music is still the same, the old stuff and the new. It all brings memories to the surface....and kids say that music doesn't affect them?....really? 
I love singing it as well. Several years ago on Christmas Eve as a family group we began singing all the Christmas Music we had sheet music for and could play on the piano....singing Christmas music is as good if not better than listening to it.  I also loved when we did Cole Collection...singing only at Christmas time, while hectic and time consuming it was great fun.

So now with the memory stuff out of the way, I have a question: what's with the crazy faux Christmas music? Think "My Favorite Things".......really snowy white winters that melt into spring and snowflakes that say on my nose and eyelashes or even those brown paper packages have nothing to do with Christmas music. I understand that they are winter things here in our part of the world and that there are other songs that deal with winter only that we call Christmas songs, but hey the other winter songs were written with Christmas in mind and "Favorite Things" for a musical call "The Sound of Music"...which is a stupid title for that musical as well.... but I digress. There are also the songs that just are annoying Christmas songs....like "Christmas Shoes," "Grown Up Christmas List," "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas," "Blue Christmas," "Havin' a Wonderful Christmas Time" and "Do you Hear What I Hear." I know that this is just personal preference and that what is dumb to me maybe another persons fav, but we all get a choice.  My Brother dislikes "Little Drummer Boy" which ranks right up there for me as well.

Here are some of my favs! Not just songs but types and CD's.....
I love almost anything sung by the classic crooners...so thank heavens for Michael Buble. Both of his Christmas CD's are pretty darn good. I am really liking his latest CD.
I also enjoy the choral classics, old and new sung by the MoTab and the Cambridge Singers...John Rutter is the new choral classic master. His stuff sung by the Cambridge Singers is wonderful.
As a kid I loved the records by the singing groups, I can't remember the different group names but they reminded me of the background singers on all of the wonderful Christmas specials we had on TV when I was a kid.  A favorite that most of the groups sang was "Need a Little Christmas." This song is one of my all time favorites songs, it is from the musical Mame.....go figure.
Religious Christmas songs for the most part are also awesome.  If I had to make a top ten.......wow, how hard. I'm going to have to think on it a bit because just when I think I've got it narrowed down I hear or think of another song that I love......yikes, picking favorites is hard.

MCC