I was just curious about holiday music and what people like. My favorite is probably Carol of the Bells, but specifically the Trans-Siberian Orchestra version. Anyone got others?

White Christmas - but a very tough call to pick just one - different songs fit different moods and time of season.

Deck the Halls...fa la la la la...

"Good King Wenceslas".

I don't know why, I just like it.

White Christmas and TSO's Carol of the Bells are wonderful. Still...

The Christmas Song. ("Chestnuts roasting on an open fire...")

But, it should be either Nat Cole or Mel Torme singing it.

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TSO - Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24 (Carol of the Bells), This Christmas Eve, An Angel Returned, The Three Kings and I (What Really Happened), Christmas in the Air, For the Sake of Our Brother, What Child Is This? - covers the three Christmas releases lots of good stuff.

Bowie/Crosby - Peace On Earth/Little Drummer Boy

Off a compilation disc The Christmas Song - Mel Torme, Little Drummer Boy - Johnny Cash, O Come, All Ye Faithful - Jim Nabors, It Came Upon A Midnight Clear - Burl Ives

White Christmas - Bing Crosby (Sinatra does a good job with this song too)

Marvellous Toy - The (Irish) Rovers

Snoopy's Christmas ... and so much more

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" The universe is running away
I heard it on the news just the other day
There's this new stuff called dark energy
We can't measure and we can't see..." - from Jimmy Buffett's What if the hokey pokey is all it really is about?

Feliz Navidad all the way! 8)
By the way, does anyone here know what the "fa la la la la" bit means in the Christmas carol? Basically back in the middle ages you put in fa la las in whenever there was a lyric that wasn't, ahem, suitable for all members of the audience. Sure changes the song once you know that doesn't it?

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"Christmas at Ground Zero" by Weird Al Yankovic

... what? 8)

Joe Feeney's rendition of "The Holy City" on the Lawrence Welk Show.

Classic Irish tenor doing a song that needs one for the best results.

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O Holy Night
by Perry Como.

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I am made from the dust of the stars,
And the oceans flow in my veins.
-Rush.

" Deck us all with Boston Charlie", of course.

Falla-ralla-dollar and cauliflower! :wink:

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"In Dulci Jubilo" by Mike Oldfield.

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Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer (Randy Brooks) :P

I've currently always this "Let it snow"-tune from "Die Harder" in my head...

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For a slightly alternative view: Pogues, Fairy Tale Of New York

More mainstream: Bing and White Christmas

For a happy singalong with the kids, Jingle Bells

Carol (though I'm not religious) Silent Night.

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There are some specific arrangements of different pieces I like better, but Adeste Fideles tends to be my overall favorite.

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And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling [faces] lyin' to ye' everywhere ye' go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.

It depends on mood, but one of

The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl - Fairytale Of New York. Shane is greatest poet of his generation, and this captures the magic of Christmas in how the ordinary (or indeed downright miserable) can become strangely wonderful if you just look at it in a different frame of mind.

Darlene Love - Christmas (Baby Please Come Home). Possibly the greatest use of the Wall Of Sound. Ever. That chorus just takes your head clean off.

The Flaming Lips - Christmas At The Zoo. Silly. Wonderful. Surreal, and yet somehow right. And I adore the (possibly misheard; the lyrics site I tried disagrees with me) line when the animals don't want to escape:

I'd forgotten about that song, just dug out the If I Should Fall From Grace with God lp. Hearing Kirsty Maccoll's voice, has also led me to digging out a compilation disc containing her full length version of A New England (not Christmas, but it's been some time since I've heard that song).

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" The universe is running away
I heard it on the news just the other day
There's this new stuff called dark energy
We can't measure and we can't see..." - from Jimmy Buffett's What if the hokey pokey is all it really is about?

I'm surprised no one's mentioned Manheim Steamroller yet. Good stuff, what they do. . .

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Blue Christmas - Elvis
Little Drummer Boy - Bing Crosby and David Bowie

O Holy Night - Eric Cartman is pretty good too. :wink:

My choice would have to be Greg Lake's I Believe in Father Christmas closely followed by Steeleye Span's Gaudete. Favourite Carol: probably the Holly and the Ivy. But at school I always loved singing Oh Come Let us Adore Him - great chorus!

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The Muppets singing "The Twelve Days of Chrismas."
Especially Miss Piggy's "Fi-ive Go-olden Riiiings.....Ba dum bum bum!"

Behold a Rose, sung in German, by the Amherst men's glee club, circa 1970. On a worn out, scratched, noisy, vinyl 78. Sounds like a beautiful lullaby.

A Danish group Shu-bi-dua has several Christmas songs that are all fun and enjoyable to listen to.

I have to agree with most of you tht there are lots of different songs that I enjoy for various reasons.

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--Niels Bohr, Danish Physicist.

The 12 Days of Christmas by Bob and Doug Mckenzie.

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Crud, I forgot all about that! If anybody's interested, I have the complete words for 'Boston Charlie', all verses, at home, from the original 'Pogo' strip.

Deck us all with Boston Charlie
Walla Walla Wash and Kalamazoo!
Nora's freezin' on the trolley
Swaller dollar cauliflower aligaroo!

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If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.

I've always liked John Lennon's "Happy Christmas (War is Over)".

ASCAP has issued their Top 25 list:
http://www.ascap.com/press/2004/holi...gs_120204.html

BTW, turns out Carol of the Bells didn't start out as a Christmas song. It's an old Ukrainian folk song about the new year and a sparrow. A composer heard it being played in the early 1930s and it reminded him of bells, so he wrote new lyrics and gave it a new title.

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

Post 'em! (or PM me with them). I know the "Boston Charlie" you've quoted here by heart, but there are other versions, like "Bark Us All Bow-wows of Folly" that I can never remember. And I feel like doing a little singing...


Don't we know archaic barrel
Lullaby, lillaboy, Louisville Lou
Trolley Molly don't love Harold
Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo!