See I sing, and I grew up singing choral music, so theres a LOT of hymns, and choral stuff that I love; but are pretty obscure. Also I jsut love singing chirstmas songs (both carols and pop tunes). It's sometimes hard to separate the songs I love to sing, from the songs I jsut plove to here (or both).
Honestly 20 isn't enough, but I figured it'd make a good CD, so that's what I included. Also I don't want to sort the songs by order of favorites, because it really depends.
I've included an artist reference for my favorite versions:
| Most Wonderful Time of the Year | Andy Williams |
| Silent Night | Bing Crosby |
| The First Noel | Bing Crosby |
| White Christmas | Bing Crosby |
| Little Drummer Boy | Bing Crosby and David Bowie |
| Let it Snow | Burl Ives |
| Baby it’s cold outside | Dean Martin |
| Adeste Fideles | Luciano Pavarotti |
| Hark the Herald | Nat King Cole |
| Have yourself a merry little Christmas | Nat King Cole |
| Oh Holy Night | Nat King Cole |
| Oh little town of Bethlehem | Nat King Cole |
| Oh Tannenbaum | Nat King Cole |
| The Christmas Song | Nat King Cole |
| I’ll be home for Christmas | Perry Como |
| Silver Bells | Perry Como |
| Pretty Paper | Randy Travis |
| God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen | Roger Whittaker |
| Carol of the Bells | Trans Siberian Orchestra with Choir |
| Joy to the world | Various (I like a bunch of different versions, some solo, some choir) |
Oh and my ten favorite christmas music artists in not a very particular order:
Nat King Cole (the best voice for the softer songs)
Burl Ives
Bing Crosby
Dean Martin
Andy Williams
Perry Como
Luciano Pavarotti (no-one does the projecting songs better)
Elvis
Randy Travis
Roger Whittaker (great christmas music, hate his other stuff)
Instrumentally I dig Vince Guaraldi, Mannheim Steamroller and Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and the old Arthur Feidler stuff with the Boston Pops (though John Williams did the christmas concerts 100 times better, I just never hear those recordings. I went to them a lot as a kid growing up in Boston).
And no, I don't have any women on my favorite chirstmas singer list. The songs I like, I just prefer the male voices on; again probably because I'm a singer myself.
Let's make it a meme; pass it on.