on top of christmas

I'll say it.

I'm not really into Christmas music.

It's not that I dislike Christmas music, but I don't exactly have a hankering for it this time of year, either. I mean, sure. There's plenty of good Christmas songs. Much of it, however, strikes me as painfully sentimental. Of course, this may just be the inner, bitter darkness speaking.

By far my favorite Christmas Song is "Christmas Time Is Here" by Vince Guaraldi. You may recognize the song from such Christmas specials as "A Charlie Brown Christmas."

That's right - I just gave you the whole special. The song I refer to is playing in the background during the beginning of the show (though the instrumental is about a billion times better than the version above). In fact, I think it may be my favorite piano-driven jazz song of all time, narrowly defeated Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" (which is possibly the coolest song on the planet).

Vince Guaraldi is my favorite Jazz pianist. That's probably not saying much, since I know very little about jazz. Still, anybody who could put together both "Christmas Time Is Here" and "Linus and Lucy" (commonly called the Peanuts theme) is solid in my book.

I can also recommend Sufjan Stevens' five-disc Christmas album...especially to those who really are into Sufjan Stevens. Some of it is probably too out there for a lot of folks (me included), but there's enough that's really good to make it worthwhile. When you consider that there are 42 songs spread across the set, it's a good value as well. There are a few songs that are repeated, but the versions vary so greatly from one another that you don't even notice.

Even if you spent the whole day listening to little cousins sing arias about the Batmobile losing a wheel, I hope you had a great Christmas.

Vince Guaraldi's "Greatest Hits" -
Amazon


Vince Guaraldi Trio's "A Charlie Brown Christmas" -
Amazon


Sufjan Stevens: Songs for Christmas -
Amazon