Christmas Passion

Christmas music was never too interesting to me. Hearing "Jingle Dogs," "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer," and "I Want a Hippopotamus For Christmas" were about as extensive as my exposure to novelty Christmas songs got. Most of my exposure to Christmas music was rather limited, and uninteresting.

Then something happened around the turn of the century: radio stations started to play Christmas music from about the middle of November all the way through Christmas. But it made me wonder why they kept on playing the same songs over and over again.

I told people I knew that I was sure there HAD to be more good Christmas music out there than what was being played on the radio. So I set out to find the most interesting Christmas music. All genres were fair game provided it could deliver on a few basic ground rules:

1) the songs should preferably be original compositions, and not commonly covered by other artists.

2) if they were cover versions of classic songs, they should bring something to the table that most the cover versions can't offer-good arrangement, great singing, a unique approach...

3) work safe. I'd burn the songs on MP3 CDs and take them into work to play instead of the music on the radio.

Anything is subject to catch my attention. And as I have found that there is A LOT of music out there that puts these 24 hour Christmas stations to shame, there is quite a bit more that's pure crap. So, please, send me suggestions/links/etc telling me about interesting new music (or old music...there are quite a few treasures on LP record that's never seen the light of day on CD) but keep the general crap to yourself.

Rule of thumb: if it could be featured on NBC's lighting of the Rockefeller Plaza Christmas tree special, more than likely I don't want to hear it. And if it sounds like an amature made it I don't want to hear that either.

To start off here are two early gems I came across:

Max Headroom-Merry Christmas Santa Claus
DiMara Sisters-Santa's Italian Wife

Both of these come from 45s I picked up online at different sites. DiMara Sisters came in a paper sleeve...I don't have much more information on that record. Check back later for the flip side song to be posted.

The Max Headroom record comes from 1986.

Some bloggers will only post Christmas songs this time of year. This blog will post Christmas songs ALL YEAR LONG so keep checking back from time to time. You never know what you will find on here!