8 Days of Christmas Memories

Christmas music is a very important part of most people's feelings about the season. The interesting thing to me is how much the type of music varies from family to family. Growing up, I mainly remember two records that we listened to every year: Willie Nelson's Pretty Paper and another by some group of singers whose name I can't remember. That album had cool stuff on it like "What Are You Doin' New Year's Eve?", "Be a Santa", and "Do You Hear What I Hear?"; some day I want to dig out my parents' old record collection and figure out what it was. We also had (and still do have) the big Reader's Digest Christmas Songbook, and the rule was that you couldn't start playing that until after Thanksgiving.

I sometimes wonder what our children will remember as far as Christmas music goes, because we've started a tradition of buying a new CD each year. We have a varied collection that includes CDs from Elvis, Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, The Vienna Boys Choir, Jewel, and a several other artists. One of my personal favorites is "It's a Cuban Christmas", and this year we got two new Hawaiian CDs that are both a lot of fun. What are your essential Christmas albums?