What is your favorite Christmas song?

[Lynne]

That looks nice, Dottie!  I'll have to look for an Alabama holiday CD.  I only have the Amy Grant version.

[dot-matrix]

another different one I love is

Christmas For Cowboys from John Denvers Rocky Mountain Christmas

Tall in the saddle, we spend Christmas Day, driving the cattle over snow
covered-plains.
All of the good gifts given today, ours is the sky and the wide open range.
Back in the cities they have different ways, football and eggnog and Christmas
parades.
I'll take my saddle, I'll take the reins, It's Christmas for cowboys wide-open
plains.

A campfire for warmth as we stop for the night, the stars overhead are
Christmas tree lights.
The wind sings a hymn as we bow down to pray, It's Christmas for cowboys,
wide-open plains.

Tall in the saddle we spend Christmas Day, driving the cattle over
snow-covered plains.
All of the good gifts given today, ours is the sky and the wide open range.
It's Christmas for cowboys, wide open plains.

[southendmd]

I love all of those songs, but my favorite is "O Holy Night". That song is just so beautiful.  

Edit: Another favorite song of mine is "Carol of the Bells" but I don't think I saw it on the list.

Hark! how the bells
Sweet silver bells
All seem to say,
"Throw oars away."
Christmas is here
Bringing good cheer
To young and old
Meek and the bold

Ding, dong, ding, dong
That is their song
With joyful ring
All caroling
One seems to hear
Words of good cheer
From ev'rywhere
Filling the air

O how happy are their tones
Gaily they ring
While people sing
Songs of good cheer
Christmas is here
Merry, merry, merry, merry Christmas
Merry, merry, merry, merry Christmas

On, on they send
On without end
Their joyful tone
To ev'ry home

David,
I love this song, too.  I always thought the line was "throw cares away". LOL
I believe it's originally Ukrainian.

Here's my new favorite:  "My Grown Up Christmas List".  I first heard Michael Buble sing this, now many others have as well.


Grown-up Christmas List

Do you remember me?
I sat upon your knee
I wrote to you with childhood fantasies
Well, I'm all grown-up now
Can you still help somehow?
I'm not a child, but my heart still can dream

So here's my lifelong wish
My grown-up Christmas list
Not for myself, but for a world in need

No more lives torn apart
That wars would never start
And time would heal all hearts
Every man would have a friend
That right would always win
And love would never end
This is my grown-up Christmas list

What is this illusion called the innocence of youth?
Maybe only in that blind belief can we ever find the truth

No more lives torn apart
That wars would never start
And time would heal our hearts
Every man would have a friend
That right would always win
And love would never end

This is my grown-up Christmas list
This is my only lifelong wish
This is my grown-up Christmas list


Paul

[David In Indy]

David,
I love this song, too.  I always thought the line was "throw cares away". LOL
I believe it's originally Ukrainian.

Here's my new favorite:  "My Grown Up Christmas List".  I first heard Michael Buble sing this, now many others have as well.

You're right! It is "Throw cares away". Thanks for pointing it out. I'll go back and fix it! 

I love those lyrics to "My Grown Up Christmas List". If only those words were possible.

Thanks Paul! 

[moremojo]

I have to go with "Away in a Manger". That was the last Christmas carol I can remember my family singing in the presence of my maternal grandfather, just days before he succumbed, while in hospice care at his home, to terminal bone cancer. This was in December of 1998, in Sugar Land, Texas. The third and concluding verse was especially poignant under the circumstances:

Be near me, Lord Jesus, I ask Thee to stay
Close by me forever, and love me, I pray.
Bless all the dear children in thy tender care,
And take us to heaven, to live with Thee there.

[RouxB]

Non-secular is most definitely O Come O Come Emmanuel
Secular faves would be Santa Baby, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and The Christmas Song

And the nostalgic favorite-sung by me, age six, Holy Spirit School Christmas program (I got a little stage fright and just stood there for what seemed like weeks but was more like 37 seconds):

Jolly old Saint Nicholas lean your ear this way
Don't you tell a single soul what I'm going to say
Christmas Eve is coming soon, now you dear old man
Whisper what you'll bring to me, tell me if you can.

When the clock is striking twelve, when I'm fast asleep
Down the chimney broad and black
With your pack you'll creap
All the stockings you will find hanging in a row
Mine will be the smallest one you'll be sure to know

[Front-Ranger]

I have a weakness for the version of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/We Three Kings by the Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan but I don't know which album it's on.

[Jeff Wrangler]

On this list I had to go with "Silver Bells." My trouble is that I've always been excessively fond of the music of Christmas, to the degree that I have to have two lists of favorites, sacred and secular. And I can't really pick one favorite on either list.

For the secular list, as mentioned, the "top three" would be the aforementioned "Silver Bells," also "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" (by Meredith Wilson, who wrote The Music Man), and then "The Christmas Song," aka "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire."

Many would possibly consider "White Christmas" to be the greatest Christmas song ever written, but I'm finding that as I grow older, more and more I would rather not hear it. It's a beautiful song, no doubt, but its lyrics speak of loss and longing. My aversion, I know, is completely related to my own situation: Single middle-aged gay man, only child (no extended family that I'm close to), mother and all grandparents deceased--I won't go on. So I prefer to focus on happier songs, thus "Silver Bells," etc.

As for sacred songs, the top three, actually in the following order, are "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing" (maybe that has something to do with its use at the conclusion of A Charlie Brown Christmas  ), "O Come, All Ye Faithful," and "Joy to the World" (no, not the Three Dog Night song  ). One thing those carols all have in common, they're easy for a non-musician to belt out. 

Tell you what, I was surprised to read of Del's fondness for "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." (Del, if you read this, are you familiar with the version from "A Fresh Aire Christmas" by Mannheim Steamroller? Very haunting.) I've seen this carol described as a medieval Christmas carol that didn't exist in the Middle Ages. As we know it, it was put together in the mid-nineteeth century by John Mason Neale, one of those quirky--and I wouldn't be surprised if he was gay--Oxford Movement Church of England clergymen. Neale created the carol out of antiphons to be sung with the Canticle Magnificat ("My Soul Doth Magnify the Lord") at Vespers from Dec. 17 through Dec. 23. (An antiphon is a little verse, often from the Psalms, appropriate to the season or occasion, that is sung before and usually repeated after a Psalm or Canticle.)

[Ellemeno]

Put me in the "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" camp.  Though of course I love others too.

[delalluvia]

Tell you what, I was surprised to read of Del's fondness for "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." (Del, if you read this, are you familiar with the version from "A Fresh Aire Christmas" by Mannheim Steamroller? Very haunting.)

Why are you surprised?  OK, I'm surprised I like it too.  No, I'm not familiar with Manheim Steamroller's version.  I'm pretty much a musical grunt.

I've seen this carol described as a medieval Christmas carol that didn't exist in the Middle Ages. As we know it, it was put together in the mid-nineteeth century by John Mason Neale, one of those quirky--and I wouldn't be surprised if he was gay--Oxford Movement Church of England clergymen. Neale created the carol out of antiphons to be sung with the Canticle Magnificat ("My Soul Doth Magnify the Lord") at Vespers from Dec. 17 through Dec. 23. (An antiphon is a little verse, often from the Psalms, appropriate to the season or occasion, that is sung before and usually repeated after a Psalm or Canticle.)

Wow, thanks for the info.  Amazing what histories some carols have.