My Songs of the Season

A few people have recently done holiday-themed posts about things like most and least favorite songs, and I was thinking about mine. Up until last weekend, I was quickly going past the radio station playing holiday music (too soon, too soon), but then I was driving on Saturday and had to do a quick jump back to hear what is probably my total favorite, that traditional holiday favorite, Bruce Springsteen. Obviously. I love plenty of the old classics--Bing Crosby, Johnny Mathis, you know what I mean--singing classic carols. But they don't leap to mind as favorites individually.

(Also, can anyone tell me why, in the stack of Christmas CDs I have, there's an unopened CD of Gwen Stefani's You Make It Feel Like Christmas? Who snuck that in here? Weird.)

My Favorite Holiday Songs (no, not just Christmas):

• Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town, the Bruce Springsteen version. A classic! It was recorded live, and when Bruce is singing the quiet part and Clarence Clemmons starts the ho-ho-ho and you can hear Bruce trying not to lose it laughing, well, I laugh every time.
• Christmas Wrapping, by The Waitresses. So fun!
• Hanukkah Song, by Adam Sandler. I love it! (There are a lot of versions, but there's something about the first one...)

Also fun is The Kinks doing Father Christmas and the uncredited Thurl Ravenscroft doing You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch.

Then there are favorite albums:

• A Charlie Brown Christmas, obviously. Can we even be friends if you don't love this music? I'm not even a jazz fan, but this, sigh, come on. Love it.
• John Denver and the Muppets. There are one or two songs that I tend to skip over, but when they do the 12 Days of Christmas, and Miss Piggy starts really getting into/belting out the five gold rings, how can you not love it?
• The Nutcracker. I have a CD of the music and it's time to pop that one in. When I was a kid, we used to go see the ballet in Boston, and I loved the music even then.

Honorable mention goes to a record I had as a kid, How Lovely Is Christmas, which is told and sung by Bing Crosby*. About 25 years ago, a coworker copied the record onto a cassette for me--gods, I feel so old just writing this--but I don't currently have a reliable tape player**, so I was delighted to find some kind person put it up on YouTube for me.

*This is probably pure nostalgia for me--if you're never heard it, I'm not suggesting you'll love it.

**I have a CD player that has a tape player, but I haven't used it in a long time--I think it has eaten tapes, so I don't trust it.