My favorite (or at least top 10) Christmas albums

With Christmas right around the corner I thought I'd do a list of some of my favorite Christmas/Holiday albums.

1.Ultra Lounge Christmas Cocktails 2
Honestly this is it for me.   You can just end the list right now.  My hands down favorite and pretty much the only CD I listen to this time of year.   It combines all the best christmas songs recorded before they were overly beaten to death by soft rock 80's staples or the occasional jewish entertainer. :-)   But yeah... perfectly captures the spirit of Christmas.  Upbeat and yet reserved.   Make yourself a Gin and tonic, kick back next to the fireplace and just enjoy the blinking lights on the Christmas tree.  Christmas music perfection.

2. Ultra-Lounge: Christmas Cocktails, Part One

Ok, the Ultra lounge disc Christmas disc 1 is pretty good too.   It's a little more "lounge" cha cha cha, than #2, but still a great album.

3. White Christmas
Yeah, this is like the biggest selling Christmas song of all time or something.  Oh wait, no... Bing's version of Silent Night was, right?  Anyway, this one just brings back all those memories as a kid for me, since I used to have this album on Vinyl and play it ever year.  Great stuff, and a great movie too btw.
4. Chipmunks Roasting on an Open Fire
I don't know what it is about Bob River's, but it brings me back to like 1992 when the DJ's on the local rock station used to play all those dumb christmas parody tunes on the radion.  So this one was one of the newer ones from 2000, but I always enjoy it.   The Carol of the Bartenders  is awesome"hark how the cocktails seem to flow, gin tanquairy, more chardonay.  Christmas is here, drinking the cheer, ice cubes are cold, more cuervo gold." :-)     Plus a good reminder not to drink and drive.
5. J.S. Bach: Christmas Music
This may seem like an odd choice but there's something amazingly perfect about Bach and Christmas.  I think you can only listen to Chestnuts roasting on Fire or Silent night so many time.  This whole album makes me imagine Christmas before it became commercial.   Just sitting at your house on a silent peaceful evening in the dead of winter watching the falling snow perfectly content.  Great album.
6. Ultra Lounge: Christmas Cocktails 3Ultra Lounge: Christmas Cocktails 3
This one came a couple years after the first two, and although it has some good stuff on it, I always found it felt sort of like leftovers from the first two and have never been crazy about it.
7. Jolly Christmas From Frank Sinatra
Well not this album exactly (there have been so many), but this one's a compilation of some of the best.  Love Frank Sinatra, and you just can't go wrong over the holiday's without some Frank.
8. Christmas With the Beach Boys
Nothing says "Merry Christmas" like surf harmonies
9.Mr Hankey's South Park Christmas Album
Ok, this one should actually be higher on the list but I already started it and don't feel like moving it any higher. :-)   More like # 3 or 4.  Every Christmas Eve I watch the South Park Christmas episodes because they're some of the best and the music is absolutely great too.   Santa Claus and Jesus singing together on stage is killer. :-)
10. Mariah Carey -  Merry Christmas
You know I don't actually own this album, but I needed something to fill out my top 10.  I will say however that the driving bass line in All I Want For Christmas Is You may be one of the greatest, in the pocket, bass lines ever recorded. :-)


So that's about it, just some helpful suggestions from 'ol Jolly Erik Z. :-) 

Enjoy.