20 Holiday Albums For Your Consideration

It’s no secret that I love Christmas music.  I have a substantial collection of Christmas CDs and every year I go out and get a few more.  In fact, I love Christmas music so much that I start a second Internet broadcast every year, Festival Christmas, in order just to play my favorite Christmas music.

This year, I’ve decided to spotlight some of my all-time favorite Christmas CDs in order to help you in your music shopping or holiday gift buying, or just to get you in the holiday mood.  You can hear tracks from all of these CDs on Festival Christmas.   I present the list in alphabetical order by artist first name, with a short review.

Adam Rafferty – A Christmas Guitar Celebration

One of my favorite discoveries of this year is fingerstyle guitarist Adam Rafferty, and his new Christmas CD is a must for those who like solo acoustic guitar renditions of standards.

The Arrogant Worms – Christmas Turkey

This album is not for those without a sense of humor, and, honestly, the more warped the better.  My favorite tracks are “Santa’s Gonna Kick Your Ass” (“Santa’s coming and he’s gonna kick your ass, because you’ve been a rotten little brat.” and “Christmas Turkey Blues” (sung from the perspective of the turkey.

Blackmore’s Night – Winter Carols

Ritchie Blackmore (former guitarist for Deep Purple) and Candice Night have been plying their renaissance/rock fusion for many years now, and if you like some traditional music mixed with occasional crunchy guitar, I recommend this CD.

Brave Combo – It’s Christmas, Man!

Brave Combo is just flat out awesome.  Here they do the Santa Polka, wish for Christmas in July, and do polkafied and dancified versions of chestnuts like “O Christmas Tree” ( as a samba) and “The Christmas Song” (ska).  Bob Dylan pretty much ripped his accordion-driven “Must Be Santa” straight off of this CD.  If this album doesn’t move you to tap your toes, please have somebody check your pulse.

Bruce Cockburn – Christmas

One of my all-time favorite Christmas albums, highlighted by the haunting “Iesus Ahatonnia (Huron Carol)”, the gospel flavored “Early on One Christmas Morn” and the rollicking cajun hoedown gone awry, “Les Anges Dans Nos Compagnes.”

The Crossing – The Court of a King

Chicago-based Celtic band provides a wonderful take on the holidays, with my favorite track being the opening “O Come O Come Emmanuel”, which opens with haunting didgeridoo and flute, and a rollicking version of “Righteous Joseph.”

Emmylou Harris – Light of the Stable

Tasteful renditions of country Christmas classics topped off by the great vocals of Emmylou Harris.

Harvey Reid and Joyce Andersen – Christmas Morning

Harvey Reid is an amazing multi-instrumentalist (fingerstyle guitar, banjo, autoharp) and Joyce Andersen is a fiddle virtuouso.  Together, they have put together a gem of a folky Christmas CD, superbly played and sung.  One of the best purely Americana Christmas CDs I’ve ever heard.  Check them out at Woodpecker Records, Reid’s label.

Jethro Tull – The Jethro Tull Christmas Album

This leans more to the folk side of what Tull does than the hard rock side, though it does rock out on occasion.  Think more Songs From the Wood and not much Aqualung.  Features several really nice holiday instrumentals, and some nice reimagining of “Bourree”, “Pavane” and “Ring Out Solstice Bells.”

Kathy Mattea – Good News

One of the few Christmas albums where you won’t find any Santa Claus.  Rather, Mattea takes some lesser-known Christmas tunes by artists such as Dougie MacLean and Steve Earle (yep, Steve Earle), and makes them her own.  It’s got a country/Celtic influence and it is an album I come back to every Christmas.  The highlights are, what for me, is still the best of the many versions of “Mary, Did You Know?” that I’ve heard as well as the Celtic flavored “Christ Child’s Lullaby.”

Kerry Getz – It’s a Wonderful Life

I found this CD by accident, listening to a program on NPR when one of the critics was naming his favorite Christmas CDs of that year and named this one.  Later, surprisingly, I found a copy at Used Kids, and was hooked.  It’s mostly standards, but there are several clever originals, (“Christmas in Suburbia”, “Yuletide Romeo”).  The highlight, though, is a sublime rendition of one of the lesser-known Christmas carols, “The Wexford Carol.”

Loreena McKennitt – A Midwinter’s Night Dream

Like every Loreena McKennitt CD, this one features impeccable musicianship, lush Celtic/world fusion arrangements and McKennitt’s thrilling voice. Really, what else do I need to say about this one?

Mannheim Steamroller – Christmas

I remember seeing the video for “Deck the Halls” on either MTV or VH1 one late night when I was home for Christmas on winter break from college in 1984 and knowing that I had to get this record.  This was back when Mannheim Steamroller fans were mostly audiophiles, their records being what the salesman at the high end stereo store would play to get you to buy that expensive stereo you were checking out.  This was back before Mannheim Steamroller became the Official Band of Christmas and kept throwing out CDs every three or four years that sounded just like this first one.  For me, none of the follow-up Christmas albums has ever captured the wonder and joy of the classical/rock fusion of this first holiday record, and this is the one I keep going back to every year.

Moya Brennan – An Irish Christmas

Irish harpist and chanteuse Moya Brennan delivers on the album title, in the lushly produced style of her band, Clannad.  The highlight for me is the traditional “Gabriel’s Message”, a carol celebrating the Annunciation.

Over the Rhine – Darkest Night of the Year and Snow Angels

Cincinnati’s Over the Rhine gets two albums in the Holiday 20 because they’re both fantastic.  Darkest Night of the Year is more acoustic and reserved, almost melancholy, featuring more downtempo arrangements of traditional tunes as well as some surprising experimental Ric Hordinski electric guitar meandering with a couple originals.  Snow Angels, on the other hand, is a more jazzy/bluesy piano-based recording that serves as a vehicle for Karin Bergquist’s amazing vocal stylings and consists almost entirely of originals.   I’ve seen Over the Rhine many times, and when Bergquist is on, she is the sexiest woman alive, and she demonstrates it here with her steamy Santa come-on song, “North Pole Man” and “Snowed In With You.” Another highlight is the bluesy “All I Ever Get For Christmas is Blue”.

Trout Fishing in America – Merry Fishes to All

Trout Fishing in America has excelled for years at doing music for children and this is a fun Christmas CD for the whole family that features a wry sense of humor in such tunes as “I Got a Cheese Log” and “Santa Brought Me Clothes”

Various Artists – Alligator Stomp Volume 4 – A Cajun Christmas

A rollicking good time for those who like their Christmas a little swampy with a heaping helping of accordion.

Various Artists – A Holiday Feast: Creme de la Creme

This two-CD set compiles the best tracks from Hungry For Music’s holiday disks.  Hungry for Music is a Washington, DC-based organization dedicated to placing musical instruments with underprivileged children.  In addition to the holiday CDs, they have put out a long series of baseball themed compilation albums.  This CD features mostly artists that are generally unfamiliar outside the folk world (The Kennedys, Eddie From Ohio, Tom Prasada-Rao, Hazel Dickens, Bill Kirchen) as well as a lot of local artists (Eva Cassidy submitted a track before her untimely death).  The highlight for me is clearly “Yorgi the Yodeling Reindeer” by the Grandsons, but it’s got a wide variety of tracks including some excellent original songs.

Woody Phillips – A Toolbox Christmas

I found this in a $1 bin of closeouts when my local Media Play store shut down and bought it on a whim.  Woody Phillips performs Christmas songs on hand and power tools.  Seriously. After listening to it I went back and dug through the bin to find copies to give away.     You have to hear this to believe it.  It’s all kinds of awesome.  The rendition of  “The Twelve Days of Christmas” is particularly clever.