Have you heard--Christmas edition

So, I am a bit of a grinch this year. I'm ok with it. Even when I wish I weren't being such a curmudgeon about people cutting down perfectly good, oxygen producing trees to put in their houses for three weeks, then chucking it out to the landfill.

It's not that I hate Christmas, or really even Christmas music. I'm just not that festive of a girl and I'm just kind of over this holiday. Well, I am over Christmas decorations which can go tacky so, so quickly. (How is having a big blow up Santa or projector on your garage door saying "Happy Birthday Jesus!" ever a good idea?) I am over seeing Christmas paraphernalia in stores starting in August. And I'm over going to the mall to try to find generic mass-produced items for people I see a couple times a year. I am having a great time trying to figure out what to make people for homemade Christmas. I will read Luke 2 and be grateful for the birth and life of the Savior of all mankind.  

I'm really over several radio stations playing only Christmas music starting before Thanksgiving. Seriously, Charlie? You were my go to workday radio station with your fun 80s dancey songs with no repeats all day long, but then all Christmas music? Especially since there are like twelve Christmas songs that everyone and their jingle cats* sing. And then when people do write new songs, they are terrible. I can't take it.

But let's talk music that's not terrible and doesn't make me want to punch every zealous Christmas fan in the esophagus. 

One of my favorite choral pieces ever, also happens to be a Christmas song. 15 of my contemporaries in high school and I sang this song at Riverside Church at a competition. It sounded awesome. (How could it not with the acoustics in that place?) And we won.





This next isn't exactly a Christmas song, but it's a winter-flavored song about Christ.


And now for the secular fun.
I am still unsure how I made it through so many years of life not knowing that The Christmas Waltz was a song. Until Jenna on 30 Rock sang it, I had never heard it. And then I found that my old friend Nancy Wilson sang an awesome version of it, it was kind of a win-win for me.




And Otis Redding. Who can go a day without Otis? Not this girl!




*Why yes my family did have this CD circa 1994. And if you clicked on that link, I would like to apologize to you. You didn't deserve that.