My list of Christmas albums often changes from year to year.
Here’s my top five in Dec 2025.
Ella Fitzgerald’s Christmas 13 traditional sacred hymns. Angels We Have Heard on High, Hark the Herald Angel, O Holy Night, The First Noel, God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman etc.
Anne Murray - What a Wonderful Christmas 2001 28 Christmas Songs. Silver Bells, Winter Wonderland, I’ll be Home for Christmas, Little Drummer Boy, Joy to the World etc.
Mantovani Christmas 30 Christmas songs. Many are instrumental arrangements.
There are several reissues under similar titles.
Alan Jackson - Let It Be Christmas (2002)
11 popular Christmas songs with country arrangements.
Dean Martin Christmas Album nice versions of Blue Christmas, Let it Snow, Jingle Bells, White Christmas, Winter Wonderland
David Benoit - Remembering Christmas: this jazz album has several Vince Guaraldi pieces on it, which makes it a keeper.
Andy Williams Christmas Album - a sixties album that holds up well.
Wynton Marsalis - Baroque Music for Trumpets: not really Christmas music, per se, but a master class in baroque trumpet that seems to work in a Christmas rotation.
I just saw El Vez’s Merry MeX-mas show (“Let’s put the X back in X-mas and the God back in Godzilla!”) at the Casbah in San Diego last night so that covers four albums:
And number 5…
one of the first ones I start playing the day after Thanksgiving.
Christmas Rocks - the Brian Setzer Orchestra
An Irish Christmas - Moya Brennan
We Three Kings - The Roches
A Midwinter Night’s Dream - Loreena McKennitt
and a stack that all have the name Robert Shaw in there: Chorale, Orchestra, etc.
