I joked that I got so high that I imagined Bob Dylan had made a Christmas album last year. And he did, of course, but it seemed almost surreal to me. Not to comment on the quality of the album–I like Dylan’s music, but find his manufactured persona maddening–but doesn’t a “Bob Dylan Christmas album” sound like a bad parody on Saturday Night Live, perhaps aired during a writer’s strike?
My favorite album is A Christmas Gift for You, aka “the Phil Spector Christmas album,” with the Ronettes and the lush-voiced Darlene Love. My mother hunted this down on vinyl in NYC in the ’80s, and we played it so much that to me, it’s not Christmas without it. I have it on vinyl and CD, and my dear wife tolerates my overplaying it. (I’m sure she’s going to strangle me some Christmas Eve, shouting “If I hear ring a ding ding a ding dong ding one more ring ding damn time!!”)
There are plenty of other good Christmas albums out there. I picked up the Charlie Brown Christmas album by the Vince Guaraldi trip on green vinyl this year.
What’s your favorite?
Thomas Pluck writes unflinching fiction with heart. His stories have appeared in Big Pulp, Needle, Stupefying Stories, The Utne Reader Burnt Bridge, [PANK] magazine, Crime Factory, Spinetingler, Beat to a Pulp, McSweeney's Internet Tendency and elsewhere. He edits the Lost Children charity anthologies to benefit PROTECT: The National Association to Protect Children, and writes 
"The Story of O Street" in Oh Sandy: An Anthology of Humor for a Serious Cause
"Kamikaze Death Burgers at the Ghost Town Cafe" in Feeding Kate
"Acapulcolypse" in Nightfalls: Notes from the End of the World
"The Rock Ridge Ringer" in Hills of Fire: Bare-Knuckle Yarns of Appalachia
"Train" in Shotgun Honey Presents: Both Barrels
"Garbage Man" in Beat to a Pulp: Superhero
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology (Amazon Kindle & Paperback)
Odetta every time.
I’d never heard that one. I’m looking it up now, to listen to it.
In college and for years after, it was Handel’s Messiah: A Soulful Celebration. Then, I really liked the Squirrel Nut Zippers holiday album and punk versions of holiday songs. Now? Zoe Keating? Mozart? Blues? Anything but actual holiday music. Stores have ruined it all for me.
Phil Spector for me. Ella Fitzgerald second. Favorite song WHITE CHRISTMAS by the Drifters. Vince Guarani is hard to beat though.