My Top 5 Favorite Christmas Albums

As I've started to decorate the house this year for Christmas, I began to think about all the different traditions that I love about this time of year. Some Christmas's in my life has been very different compared to others. It has just depended on what season of life I was in at the moment. But there is one tradition that has remained constant throughout all the years: listening to Christmas music.

It helps that I just love Christmas, period. Additionally, during the years where I had to work over the holidays, couldn't afford to buy many gifts, or only had the energy to put of a very few decorations, the one thing I could always turn to was music. All I had to do, at the very least, was just turn on the radio.

One of the things that I love most about Christmas music is the comforting nostalgia it provides. Every year I can't wait to hear my favorites: the Boston Pop's rendition of "Sleigh Ride," Bing Crosby crooning "White Christmas," and Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas is You," to name a few.

My parents loved Christmas music too. Growing up, I remember hearing a steady stream of Christmas music coming out of the living room stereo from Thanksgiving to Christmas Day. KBIRD was the local affiliate that turned their programming format to all holiday music. That radio station planted the musical seed of joy that grew into my own holiday CD collection of about thirty albums that I continue to enjoy to this day.

Within that collection, there are five albums that I always turn to first. Of course these days I can access a lot of these albums on Apple's iTunes catalog. However, there is one that, just as the TV infomercial promised at the time, isn't available anywhere else. I'm so glad I ordered it for $19.99 plus $4.95 for shipping and handling.

So with no further ado, let's get going with this fun, old-fashioned favorite Christmas music playlist.

Celine Dion's These Are Special Times

These Are Special Times is a 1998 studio album that was Dion's first English-language Christmas album. It has both original songs and covers of popular Christmas songs like "Ave Maria" and "The Christmas Song." My favorite track on the album is her duet with Andrea Bocelli, "The Prayer." In my opinion, it is musical perfection, and I almost tear up every time I hear it.

While it's true that I've been a big Celine Dion fan ever since she started topping the charts here in the United States back in the early 90s, this Christmas album stands alone. One of the reasons I like it so much is that even though it is more contemporary than, say, Bing Crosby, there is a timeless quality to her performance of the songs. Another one of my favorite songs is "Don't Save It All For Christmas." 

The album has sold 5.6 million copies in the United States and 12 million copies worldwide and is one of the best-selling Christmas albums of all time.

Josh Groban's Noël 

It seems logical that if Dion's Christmas album is on my Top 5 List, then Josh Groban's has to be as well. While Dion certainly has more octave range, I would definitely put their Christmas sound in the same lane. It doesn't hurt that David Foster produced both These Are Special Times and Noël.

Noël, like the others on this list, is an album I can listen to and thoroughly enjoy all the way through. There is no fast-forwarding of tracks. Some of my favorite songs are "Silent Night," "I'll Be Home For Christmas," "and It Came Upon A Midnight Clear."

Noël is Groban's fourth studio album, released in 2007. According to SoundScan, it was also the best-selling holiday album in 2008, with 915,000 copies sold. In 2017, Noël was certified Sextuple Platinum for selling more than six million copies in the United States. A tenth-anniversary deluxe edition was released that year. It includes six songs not featured in the initial release, including four new recordings-- one of which is "Believe," another great song that was the feature track for the movie Polar Express.

David Foster's "The Christmas Album"

There is no denying the fact that I LOVE a good compilation album-- especially at Christmas. I like them more for this genre of music than most else simply because of the massive variety of Christmas music that exists in the world now. So many covers upon covers, and now artists are creating their own original Christmas music as well. When you have such a well-known and well-connected music producer like Foster, it is only natural that he will put together a tracklist to top the charts.

Foster's The Christmas Album includes artists like Peabo Bryson and Roberta Flack, Natalie Cole, Michael Crawford, Tom Jones, Johnny Mathis, Vanessa Williams, and Wynonna Judd! OMG, the variety! 

I love that the album opens with an orchestral arrangement of "Carol Of The Bells," featuring Foster himself playing the piano. Following that, I love Natalie Cole's "Grown-Up Christmas List" and, lastly, Michael Crawford's "Oh Holy Night."

Part of Foster's magic is his ability to help the artists he works with be more musically approachable. For example, you still know that Natalie Cole is going to sound like Natalie Cole, or Celine Dion is going to sound like Celine Dion. But when you factor in his production and instrumentation, especially if he accompanies on the piano, you will hear a song, and I'll bet you'll say, "Oh, that's a David Foster arrangement." So, if you're a fan of his and like compilation albums, I recommend The Christmas Album.

There are only 12 tracks on the whole album, but it feels complete in its entirety. In researching how many copies of The Christmas Album have been sold in the U.S. I couldn't find a sales number. I did, however, discover that copies of the album are on sale on Amazon for over $100! What?! I guess my CDs are turning out to be an investment in addition to a nostalgic collection.

Time-Life's Collection The Spirit of Christmas

Picture this: 20-year-old Jody sitting in her off-campus apartment wrapping Christmas presents at 1 a.m. On TV comes the repeat airing of a Time-Life Music Infomercial selling The Spirit of Christmas. Jody drops her scotch tape and reaches for her cordless phone. After a friendly conversation with the cheerful Time-Life operator, Jody is now excited to receive the Never-Before-Released 2-Disc set of 50 Christmas classics, digitally remastered to audio perfection, of course.

Yes, this really happened. And yes, I still have, AND LOVE, this CD set. Again, statistics on this compilation set are hard to find online, but I know for sure that it was released in 1995 by Sony Music for Time-Life. That is how they most likely had access to such an extensive library of music to include in the collection.

The Spirit of Christmas has 25 songs on each disc. There is a wide variety of artists: everyone from Barry Manilow to Emmy Lou Harris, Neil Diamond to Willy Nelson. Luciano Pavarotti sings "Ave Maria," and next is Harry Belafonte singing "Mary's Boy Child," followed by Dean Martin singing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." See what I mean about variety?

Whenever I have a big holiday project to tackle, I put these CD's in the disc player and simply let them play. Apple's curated holiday playlists have nothing on this album.

The Soundtrack to Home Alone

Later this season, I will write about some of my favorite must-watch Christmas movies. So let my inclusion of the Home Alone Soundtrack serve as a bit of a hint. And while I do have a lot of favorite Christmas movies, I can't single out as many Christmas movie soundtracks. That is what makes Home Alone so special. That, and John Williams, of course. Williams is the composer and conductor for all but a couple of the tracks on the Home Alone Soundtrack Album.

Williams is probably best known for his work on the Star Wars series. Additionally, he was the conductor of the Boston Pops from 1980 to 1993. But I would challenge that anytime one hears an iconic orchestral score of TV or film, odds are it's a Williams composition.

The musical score of Home Alone, which came out in 1990, is a character of the movie you never actually see. Williams perfectly captures the emotion of a scene through music. The film's signature tune, "Somewhere in My Memory," was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song and the Grammy Award for Best Song for a Movie. The song can be heard in numerous sections of the film, either in full length or fragments, forming the backbone for the film's soundtrack.

In addition to "Somewhere In My Memory," I love "Holiday Flight" and his version of "Carol of the Bells." I was re-listening to the soundtrack the other day, and it felt as if I was actually watching the movie. For me, that is the mark of a really great soundtrack.

Thank you for checking out my list of holiday music favorites! Happy Holidays!