The 26 Best Christmas Albums of All Time (#13-1)

The list continues with the numbers 13 through 1 below. Click here to return to #26 – 14.

13. Various Artists – Home Alone Christmas

The first two Home Alone movies are among the season’s best. This pseudo-soundtrack culls together unique and sometimes-peculiar renditions that would never make most “Various Artists” cuts. It’s a sort of alt-NOW compilation that also happens to include some of John Williams’ best work from the ’90s. Alan Menken is on hand, too, as composer of the sweetly sung children’s choir tune, “My Christmas Tree.”

Note: Home Alone 2: Lost in New York originally received two soundtrack albums — one with the isolated score and another featuring songs pulled from both Home Alone films. The latter eventually went out of print but came back in 1997 as Home Alone Christmas, featuring a slightly revised track list. Gone are Bette Midler’s take on John Williams’ “Somewhere In My Memory” and Uncle Frank’s favorite shower sing-along, “Cool Jerk (Christmas Mix)”. In their place are more Williams score selections and a handful of highly worthwhile covers (among other changes).

Best Original Tracks: “Somewhere In My Memory” by John Williams and “All Alone on Christmas” by Darlene Love
Best Contemporary Track: “Christmas All Over Again” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Best Covers: “Sleigh Ride” by TLC, “Please Come Home for Christmas” by Southside Johnny Lyon, and “Carol of the Bells” by John Williams

12. Reba McEntire – Merry Christmas to You

The last album released before Reba McEntire became just “Reba,” Merry Christmas to You is a gently produced, warmly woodsy record.

Peaceful, reflective, and soothing, it’s the rare big-star Christmas album to back off and quietly allow “the reason for the season” to take the spotlight instead. Nearly every track is religious, and some of the most poignantly so are either originals or seldom-tapped traditionals. It might be the best country Christmas album of the last thirty years.

Best Original Tracks: “A Christmas Letter” and “On This Day”
Best Covers: “The Christmas Guest” and “Silent Night”

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11. Ella Fitzgerald – Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas

How’d you like to spend Christmas on Christmas Island? So goes the lyric on “Christmas Island,” a song that didn’t make its way to this album until the re-release but nevertheless defines its overall timbre and tone. Relentlessly happy but still beautifully sung, it’s Fitzgerald just having fun — scatting, adopting caricatured voices, teaching Frosty to do the Charleston, etc. “What do you know about Rudolph and his nose?” she asks in one of her delightful lyrical bends.

Anyone who can make “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” sound playful deserves a nod. Ella doesn’t wish you a somber Christmas, after all. Like the title says, she’s all about the swing, and Swinging Christmas delivers that in spades. Taking magnificent liberties with phrasing, lyrics, and melody, the First Lady of Jazz simply does what she wants when it comes to Christmas, preferring to spend hers in a more tropical climate (and inviting the rest of us to swing on by).

Best Tracks: “Christmas Island” and “Frosty the Snowman”

10. Nat King Cole – The Christmas Song

Nat King Cole’s voice somehow sounds like the world’s most comfortable blanket. Perhaps that’s why his is the definitive version of the season’s most seminal secular anthem: “The Christmas Song.”

It’s easy to think of this as a conventionally old-school record, but his takes on “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” and the frequently forgotten “I Saw Three Ships” are actually playful and inventive. In fact, the album is filled with little surprises, staging sudden attacks of instrumentation that underscore the enigma of Christmas. Exceedingly beautiful on every single track, The Christmas Song is a holiday chestnut ripe for roasting (on an open fire, of course).

Note: The album was originally released as The Magic of Christmas in 1960, but it didn’t include Cole’s best-known number, “The Christmas Song,” which he’d recorded twice in 1946, again in 1953, and once more in 1961. That final version is the one radio stations play today. So in 1963, Capitol reissued the album as The Christmas Song, adding the eponymous hit in lieu of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” The latter song was then reinserted years later, and bonus tracks (some of them standing among the album’s best) were added too. “Adeste Fideles” was traded out for an all-English recording of the same, better known as “O Come All Ye Faithful.” It’s this most recent version of the album I include here because it’s simply a much stronger lineup than the original 1960 release… and the only version you’ll find easily in stores.

Best Original Tracks: “Caroling, Caroling” and “The Christmas Song”
Best Cover: “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”

9. Jars of Clay – Christmas Songs

Most lists include Sufjan Stevens’ Songs for Christmas to honor the hipster end of the holiday spectrum, but while his mega-album is very good and worthy of acclaim, a good half of it is pretty tangentially “Christmas” at best. Instead, I submit this even-better hipster record from a group that isn’t typically thought of as “hipster”: Jars of Clay. (If you don’t believe it’s a hipster album, consider this: in addition to CD, it was also released on USB stick.)

Christmas Songs is a record for listening in low lighting. Little strokes of genius propel it from one track to the next as the profound mystery of Christmas slowly seeps out of every song. True to their name, Jars of Clay have molded something different, earthy, and new in an over-worn and often-trite genre.

Best Original Track: “Love Came Down at Christmas”
Best Covers: “Christmastime is Here” and “O Little Town of Bethlehem”

8. The Chipmunks – Christmas with The Chipmunks / Christmas with The Chipmunks, Vol. 2

For my generation, The Chipmunks are less a novelty than a fact of life. They had three decades under their belt by the time I was born, so I never encountered any sense of “Singing chipmunks? That’s weird.” By the time it even occurred to me to think of their music as anything other than perfectly legitimate radio fodder, I’d already spent a whole childhood hearing them on the regular — a childhood in the mid-to-late 80s and early 90s, no less, when the country had suddenly fallen in love with Alvin and his brothers all over again. As an adult, I can appreciate the peculiarity of a fictional, helium-pitched rodent band scoring more than a half-dozen Top 40 Billboard hits, including multiple #1s (and we’re not just talking Christmas here), but that only makes me appreciate and respect these manufactured music legends even more.

As a ubiquitous fixture of December for the last half-century, The Chipmunks are bastions of nostalgia for nearly all of us this time of year. Accordingly, both of these sweetly performed and thoughtfully produced albums occupy a special place in the Christmas canon.

Note: I’m cheating a little here, combining The Chipmunks’ first two Christmas albums together at #8, but given their intermingled history, I think it’s fair. The two records (originally released in 1961 and 1963, respectively) have been intermixed, rearranged, combined, and repackaged so many times that they practically exist as a single entity. Indeed, they’re often sold that way in stores.

Best Original Track: “The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late)”
Best Covers: “Here Comes Santa Claus”, “Jolly Old St. Nicholas”, “All I Want for Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth)”

7. Vince Guaraldi Trio – A Charlie Brown Christmas

A 25-minute cartoon special is an unlikely home for some of the coolest cool jazz ever recorded, but that’s a big part of what makes the Peanuts gang so endearing. I think there’s something cathartic about watching Charlie Brown’s existential bewilderment play out at such an easy pace. During Christmas, the effect is doubly therapeutic because it speaks to our tinsel-time tensions. The hectic overdrive that is part and parcel of Christmas in the commercial age melts away in the warmth of Vince Guaraldi’s calming composure.

But tranquility begets rumination. In its latter half, Charlie Brown Christmas is much more than simply carefree. The album finds its special place in an especially impactful “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.”

Best Original Tracks: “Linus and Lucy” and “Christmas Time Is Here”
Best Cover: “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing”

6. Various Artists – A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector

A Christmas Gift for You ends with Phil Spector’s spoken-word holiday greeting, which is a bit like getting a birthday call from Charles Manson. But in the twelve tracks that precede that, the album’s as captivating as he is creepy. Spector’s signature “Wall of Sound” is inherently nostalgic, thrusting our imaginations back to an AM-radio era of Christmases Past. But they’re not just fondly remembered relics; these are genuine pop-rock-and-roll gems, each and every one. It’s like listening to the world’s best-ever Christmas parade.

Best Original Track: “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” by Darlene Love
Best Covers: “Sleigh Ride” by The Ronettes; “Marshmallow World” by Darlene Love

5. Hanson – Snowed In

Released just six months after “MMMbop” and Hanson’s breakthrough debut, Snowed In was unquestionably a label-mandated rush job. And it worked, becoming the season’s best-selling album, going Platinum in less than a month, and reportedly nabbing another million sales overseas. But in the sixteen years since, Snowed In‘s been forgotten, rarely turning up on radio or acknowledged in all-time lists like this one.

To be clear, Snowed In should have been terrible. There was almost no way it wouldn’t be. Mercury Records didn’t care; it was going to sell either way. Hanson were hot on the charts and, at the time, a probable flash in the pan. Best to cash in while the gettin’s good. But I guess when you’re suddenly-famous kids who happen to be talented as hell, you don’t have anything better to do than make one of the best Christmas albums known to man. Like most of Hanson’s output, the end result is overflowing with three-part harmony, Motown-inflected grooves, and a hint of alt-rock edge.

Best Track: “Silent Night Medley: O Holy Night / Silent Night / O Come All Ye Faithful”
2nd Best Track: “Merry Christmas Baby”

4. Amy Grant – A Christmas Album

In the context of Amy Grant’s career, A Christmas Album is fascinating. The eponymous “A” seems almost prophetic now, as it would become the first of many seasonal outings for Grant, whose status as Contemporary Christian Music’s first and biggest star makes her an obvious choice as the holiday’s musical liaison.

The record flirts with country (“Tennessee Christmas,” an original that would go on to become one of the most covered holiday songs of the 20th Century), rock (“Emmanuel,” a stadium anthem unlike anything on almost any other Christmas project), creative revisionism (“Little Town” sounds nothing like the “O… Bethlehem” version we all know), and of course, the spiritual music she was best known for at the time (“Heirlooms” finds Grant breaking down in her attic, reflecting on the importance of family and Savior to her sense of self).

But I don’t think the masses bought A Christmas Album in droves just because it made sense to buy one from “the church lady.” That’s never been Grant’s image anyway, to date the only artist able to find mega-success on both sides of the industry’s holy divide. Rather, I suspect it’s the music that sells itself, sounding manifestly like Christmas. While the production certainly has enough ’80s eccentricity to feel nostalgic now (and “totally awesome” then), the prevailing atmosphere is one of ageless magnitude. “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” — probably the best recording of that song ever — is treated to enormous orchestration, with a colossal choir filling what sounds like an ancient cathedral. Later, “Angels We Have Heard on High” gets the same treatment, bringing the album to a close. In between, beautiful takes on traditionals like “Sleigh Ride” and “The Christmas Song” have earned her heavy airplay for decades since.

Actually, the front-cover art manages to capture the record’s tonality in a single snapshot — an old-fashioned holiday with big hair and an adorably horrible sweater.

Best Original Tracks: “Emmanuel” and “Love Has Come”
Best Covers: “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” “Little Town,” and “Sleigh Ride”

Fun fact for Disney fans: This album’s “Christmas Hymn,” an Amy Grant original that sounds like a centuries-old song, was adapted as an instrumental piece for Epcot’s former “Lights of Winter” show and still plays in that park during Christmas every year.

3. Elvis Presley – Elvis’ Christmas Album

Earlier in this article, I lamented Michael Jackson never giving us a Christmas album, but maybe we do have one in a way. After all, Elvis’ hip thrust was really the 50s’ sock hop to Jackson’s late-80s crotch grab. Part of what makes Elvis so fascinating is the fine line he tread between wholesomeness and deviancy. Here’s a guy whose sexual provocation prompted generational overhaul and widespread parental panic but who also put out platinum-selling gospel albums on the regular. It all seems tame today, but maybe that legendary duality accounts for some of the appeal in Elvis’ Christmas Album. It’s a musical seesaw of reverent balladry and shake-those-hips-girl rock & roll.

One of the album’s most fascinating tracks is “White Christmas,” which was a black Christmas when The Drifters first recorded it in this same style. But as he’d done before (see “Hound Dog”), Elvis popularized (read: reappropriated, arguably) their arrangement for the white masses. Songwriter Irving Berlin (also white but not fond of Elvis one bit) called Presley’s version a “profane parody of [a] cherished yuletide standard” and tried to have it banned!

Elvis’ voice — soulful at times and aggressively snarling at others — rings through like a ribbon-wrapped Christmas bell, accompanied by absolutely delicious piano playing and everything-in-its-right-place arrangement.

Note: The original vinyl put all the rockin’ secular numbers on Side A and left solemnity for Side B, which was comprised entirely of religious songs (four of them gospel tunes). Like a lot of people, though, I grew up with the 1970 RCA Camden reissue, which dropped those gospel cuts, intermixed the two sides, and added two newer songs: “If Everyday Were Like Christmas” and “Mama Liked the Roses.” When I eventually found my grandparents’ original vinyl, I fell in love with “(There’ll Be) Peace in the Valley (For Me)” too, but the ’70 edition probably offers the better balance and benefits from the excellence of those added songs.

Best Original Tracks: “Santa Claus Is Back in Town” and “Santa Bring My Baby Back (To Me)”
Best Covers: “White Christmas” and “Blue Christmas”

2. Amy Grant – Home for Christmas

Christmas has never sounded more regal, splendid, or majestic than it does on 1992’s Home for Christmas, one of the best-selling holiday albums of all time and among the most influential in the last quarter-century. Though Grant had just released a string of Top 10 Billboard pop hits, including a couple of #1s, there’s not even a hint of “Baby Baby” bubble gum here. A resounding symphony-orchestra accompanies nearly every track, putting on an emphatic production fit for the King of Kings.

It’s this album that gives us modern holiday classics “Breath of Heaven” and “Grown-Up Christmas List.” Grant’s status as a pop-rock-Christian crossover arms her with gravitas in delivering the Christmas message as she sings from Mary’s perspective (“Breath of Heaven”), contemplates the here-and-now import of the Nativity (“Emmanuel, God With Us”), and borrows from Handel’s Messiah in “Joy to the World.” Though she infuses a dash of country with “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” and some elegant jazz in “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” (my favorite version of that song), the album’s prevailing characteristic is its dignified opulence.

Best Original Track: “Breath of Heaven (Mary’s Song)
Best Covers: “It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year” and “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”

1. Mariah Carey – Merry Christmas

I assume God created Mariah Carey because no one was singing “O Holy Night” like it needed to be sung. Her voice is one of the greatest in the history of recorded sound and was in its prime in 1994, when Merry Christmas came along like a sleigh-ride rocket to the North Pole.

Listening to it is like drinking gingerbread egg nog outside in a blizzard on December 24th. Carey couldn’t get away with this kind of ear-candy excess any other time of year, but her voice lends itself to yuletide exuberance and so she doesn’t hold back one. bit. Never is that more evident than in “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” an amazingly well-crafted insta-classic that sets the tone for the whole record with throwback piano, jingle bells, and some seriously soulful gospel.

At the end of the day, Christmas boils down to a celebration of something epically wonderful that happened a long time ago. It deserves a buoyant, joyous celebration like this one. It deserves to be sung like nobody’s business. It deserves organs and octaves and harmonies that push pop to the brink. In short, it deserves an astounding talent like Mariah Carey at her very best. And that’s what it gets.

Best Original Track: “All I Want for Christmas is You”
Best Covers: “O Holy Night” and “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”

Honorable Mentions

Andy Williams – The Andy Williams Christmas Album
Bette Midler – Cool Yule
Christina Aguilera – My Kind of Christmas
Danny Elfman – Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
John Denver & The Muppets – A Christmas Together
Kelly Clarkson – Wrapped in Red
Mannheim Steamroller – Mannheim Steamroller Christmas
Michael Convertino & Various Artists – The Santa Clause: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Michael W. Smith – Christmastime
The Muppets – The Muppet Christmas Carol: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
‘N Sync – Home for Christmas
Sufjan Stevens – Songs for Christmas
Various Artists – Superstar Christmas
Various Artists – A Very Special Christmas
Whitney Houston – The Preacher’s Wife: Original Soundtrack Album