Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories - December 3 - Christmas Music

I am a self-admitted Christmas music-aholic. I enjoy almost every type of Christmas music and buy new albums every year. I like to hear Christmas music when I am shopping, when I am at work, when I am baking, when I am decorating the house, when I am wrapping gifts... pretty much all of the time.

I have over 400 Christmas albums from several different genres and I can't say as I have a favorite. I enjoy listening to folk, country, pop, Christian, jazz, light rock, Celtic and many other styles.  I like listening to lyrics and enjoy being able to sing along when I am so inclined.

Last year I uploaded all of my music to a cloud service so that I can listen to any music any time. I marked all of the Christmas albums as "Holiday" so that I can choose to listen to just holiday music this time of year. I also created a playlist of non-secular music to play at work.

Some of my favorites include two Christmas albums by Kathy Mattea, "Good News" and "Joy for Christmas Day" Most of the music is non-standard Christmas fare but it is all beautiful. Some of the songs have a Celtic feel that is very haunting. Kathy Mattea's version of "Mary, Did You Know" is the first one I heard and remains my favorite version to this day.

A new favorite for me is "On a Cold Winter's Day" by Quadriga Consort. The songs are from the British Isles and include English, Irish and Scottish tunes some in Gaelic. One song, Tàladh Ar Slànaighear, is the old version of Kathy Mattea's "Christ Child's Lullaby" on her "Good News" album. Just beautiful!

The last couple of years I have purchased albums by Pentonix and Straight No Chaser which are both a cappella groups. Very fun to listen to and simply amazing when you realize it's just voices with no instrumental accompaniment. I have no idea how they can make their voices do that!

The old stand-bys are sometimes the best: Johnny Mathis, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, and Bing Crosby remind me of listening to Christmas music as a child. Kenny Rogers, Dolly Partin, Vince Gill and Kathy Mattea entertained me while I was prepping for Christmas with my own young family. And today I have all of them available to me from "the cloud," ready to listen to at any time. I almost always "shuffle" the music so I am pleasantly surprised as the songs move from one genre to the next.

One of my favorite parts of the holiday season is the music. I can hardly wait to hear the new releases this year!


Clips are from : http://www.clipartpal.com/clipart_pd/holiday/christmas/carolers_10262.html

"The Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories (ACM) allows you to share your family’s holiday history twenty-four different ways during December! Learn more at http://adventcalendar.geneabloggers.com.