THE BEST CHRISTMAS MUSIC EVER (Says I.) Part Four

Here we are in Dave Letterman territory, beginning our top ten Christmas songs of all time, according to me and my personal preference. It should be said, of course, that you will probably disagree with me.  If you do, please let me know what an ass I am in the comments.  But you never know, your favorite still might be somewhere on this list.

Today we have booze, sugar, and Dean Martin, not necessarily in that order.  See more after the jump:

THE BEST CHISTMAS SONGS EVER! (Says I.) Part 3

The Choir of Corona del Sol High School in Tempe, AZ.

We're in the middle of the pack for our list of the 25 best Christmas songs, which means there's only 3 shopping days left until Christmas.  Get on it procrastinators!  If you need help, there are some handy tips for last-minute shoppers here.

This edition of the list is heavy on angels and bells, for some reason, and features the second appearance of Bing Crosby.  Let's get straight to it.  To see the first two installments in this list, click here and here.

THE BEST CHRISTMAS SONGS EVER! (So says I.) Part One.

That's the Berthoud High School Show Choir from Berthoud, CO.  Ain't they cute?
The picture, BTW, belongs to the Berthoud Recorder.  I own nothing.

In the spirit of the season, and as a counter-balance to recent awfulness (which I'm not even going to link to because who needs to subject themselves to that anymore?).  I have instead to offer my 25 favorite Christmas songs, in order of my personal preference.  First five will be today, with follow up posts every day until the big reveal on Christmas Eve.

So come along and we'll sing a chorus or two (ouch, sorry).  You might learn a thing or two.  Or not.  Either way, it'll be more fun than eleven ladies dancin'... or lads a-leapin', if that's your bag.

By the way, The Twelve Days do not appear anywhere on this list.  If you think you can still handle that, click on...

The Nostalgia Machine

From the brilliant xkcd.com  His cartoons all carry an Easter egg, visible when you mouse over them; the one on this chart says: "An American tradition is anything that happened to a Baby-Boomer twice."

Regardless of what I may have said in recent posts, I really do enjoy the holiday season.  I even enjoy some of the more commercial aspects of it, especially the yearly ritual of bemoaning the commercialism of the season while simultaneously wallowing in it.  In large part, though, my enjoyment is based in nostalgia of the purest kind, and my nostalgia is triggered by cynical advertising ploys, bent on producing exactly the kind of reaction xkcd's referring to with the above chart.  Why is our Christmas celebration rooted so very firmly in the past?  If I remove the baby-boom signifiers from the season - the Red-Rider Air Rifle kind of stuff - I'm left with yet another layer of images from a vanished past, namely the Victorian era, when people actually rode around in sleighs, and Dickens was the hot new thing.