A Christmas Music idea I stole from someone else.

The Slacktavist, in his role as a Christian Fundamentalist spoiler and all around practical guy, has a good post about the quality of Christmas Music and asks his readers to suggest some good Christmas songs. He is suffering with the rest of the Philadelphia radio market is suffering through as Sunny 104.5 plays Christmas music 24-7. The problem is that they play the most insipid Christmas music they can find. His reflections inspired me to look for a few good ones to crib for my Ipod.

• My big score this year is that I found the Snow Miser song from the Year without a Santa Claus at the Snow Miser website. Look for the mp3 download in multimedia. The Year without a Santa Claus is probably the best of all of the Christmas specials.

• Have you every listened closely to Jingle Bells? There are no Christmas references in the song whatsoever, it is merely about a sleigh ride in the snow and the horses have bells on. "Making spirits bright" is not necessarily only about the season. I am going to play it til the snow melts!
  

• Winter Wonderland is the same as Jingle Bells, it isn't a Christmas song, it is a winter song. My favorite is a real swinging version by Avalon. As pointed out by the Slacktavist, there are a whole bunch of cold weather, snowy winter season songs that are co-opted for Christmas and then don't get played after Jan 1st. It doesn't even snow at Christmas most years.

I have been filling up my Holiday playlist with more eclectic Christmas favorites like the Waitresses - Christmas Wrapping, Wham - Last Christmas, Coldplay - 2000 miles, Sting - Bethlehem Down. I even found Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies on glass harmonica as a free download from Amazon. Follow the recommendations of com"YULE"ation Cleric (Mitch Mirthman), he seems to have scoured all of the holiday downloads to help you avoid 30 second samples and bad music.

What's your favorite holiday song? What is your favorite, most eclectic holiday song? Please comment.