Being the flip side of this thread, what Christmas songs/carols do you look forward to every year? Some of mine are:
The Roche’s Winter Wonderland
The Waitresses’ Christmas Wrapping
Meg Davis’ Other People’s Children
White Christmas. Bing. Of course.
Bing and Bowie-Little Drummer Boy.
Handel’s Messiah, sung by the local university’s chorale. Bonus this year: my niece will be part of the ensemble. I’m as agnostic as anything, but that piece of music is as inspirational as anything!
I also love various renditions of other religious Christmas songs, especially “Oh Holy Night.”
And seconding Bing + Bowie. Love it!
No fair. You guys are making me sentimental when I wanted to say “Santa Was Stoned On Christmas” or “Grandpa Got Run Over By a Beer Truck.”
You haven’t listened to my “Winter Wonderland” link, have you?
My two favorites:
Johnny Mathis’ Sleigh Ride. When he shouts “YOOOO Hoo!” at ~1:57 I do too. Assuming I haven’t already been singing along doing a Johnny Mathis impression.
Bing Crosby’s Mele Kalikimaka. My wife and I usually go to Hawaii for Christmas these days, as it’s cheaper from the West Coast to fly there than it is to visit our families. (And waaaaaaay more relaxing. :))
I do enjoy Charo’s version of “Silent Night,” just so I can hear her sing, “*slip in heavenly piss . *. .”
I will never pass up a chance to plug Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS CD series Carols for a Cure. Broadway casts singing both traditional and newly written holiday songs.
EXCELLENT!
Darlene Love’s “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” is, in my mind, one of the few Christmas songs that actually stands on its own as a great, great song. The singing, the production, the emotion - it’s all there, right up there with the best of Phil Spector’s many pop hits. The album it’s on, A Christmas Gift For You, features other songs from Spector’s stable of artists that are all great. I could really just put it on repeat for tree decorating and be just fine.
Happy Xmas. Hands down. Love it.
Guilty pleasure: All I want for Christmas is You, by Mariah Carey. I make no apologies.
Another vote for Bing and Bowie.
Not having loaded my Christmas/New Year playlist onto my iPhone yet, I’m going by memory, but the ones that come to mind are:
Eurythmics - “Winter Wonderland”
Sting - “Gabriel’s Message”
Barenaked Ladies - about half of the songs on their “Barenaked for the Holidays” release, but especially “Elf’s Lament” (Santa’s elves want to unionize), “Footprints” (a guy feeling alone on Christmas), and their medley of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” and “We Three Kings” with Sarah McLachlan
Fairytale of New York (Pogues) and O Holy Night (especially if Christina Augilera’s belting it out).
And I don’t even celebrate. 
What, no votes for Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer?
I forgot - the only “Joy to the World” on my holiday playlist, that I recall, is the one from Three Dog Night. 
I’d be lax in not mentioning the entire Vince Guaraldi Trio soundtrack for “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”
Father Christmas, the Kinks
Santa Claus And His Old Lady, Cheech and Chong
Carol of the Bells - is strangely sinister, and that pleases me.
Little Drummer Boy - a children’s tattoo, I find it ironic.
I look forward to quite a lot of carols (In Dulci Jubilo, Coventry Carol, Angelus ad Virginem, We Three Kings, O Come All Ye Faithful). No songs though.
The song about nutmeg by John Legend and Stephen Colbert.