The Best Christmas Carols Album In The World...Ever!

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In which the cream of A&M Records’ easy listening artists – Herb Alpert, Burt Bacharach and Sérgio Mendez among them – offer up a Christmas album as velvety-smooth as eggnog. The highlight: Claudine Longet’s delicate confection of strings, acoustic guitar and breathy vocals, Snow. 18. Various artists – Ghosts of Christmas Past (1981) Christine Schäfer, Bernarda Fink, Werner Güra, Gerald Finley, Christian Gerhaher; Arnold Schoenberg Choir; Concentus Musicus Wien/Nikolaus Harnoncourt Deutsche Harmonia Mundi 8869711225-2 Following a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Rector Phillips Brooks wrote the text to this hymn after he was inspired by the view of Bethlehem from the hills of Palestine. Three years later in 1871, his church organist Lewis Redner wrote the melody for the local Sunday school children’s choir. The lyrics for this carol were written by Massachusetts pastor Edmund Sears and refer to ideas of war and peace. The most common musical setting was adapted from an English melody in 1874 by Arthur Sullivan.

I grew up exposed to multiple religions. My dad’s side of the family were foot-washing Italian Catholics, while my mom’s side were Jews from New York. In college, my mom was reborn as a Christian, and for me as a kid, Easter with Nonno Giuseppe was as big of a deal as going to seder at temple with my Popi Mel. Now on every Christmas morning, my mom and I listen to A Christmas Album by Barbra Streisand, a collection of spectacular renditions of yule-time classics by not just a Jewish woman, but one of the most notable and beloved Jews in show business. Moments like Babs’ broadway pizzaz on “Jingle Bells?” to her church choir-worthy range on “Sleep In Heavenly Peace (Silent Night)” to her impeccable singing in Latin on “Gounod’s Ave Maria,” have made A Christmas Album one of the top 10 Christmas albums of all time, selling over 5.3 million copies. And for my mom and I, the juxtaposition of faiths across each of the album’s splendid 33 minutes is a constant reminder of accepting and respecting every person’s God-given right to believe and worship whatever and however they’d like. Nothing is more fitting over the holidays than that. —Adrian Spinelli As school choirs go, Westminster School’s is rather fine, its dynamic range and blend top notch. An ambitious yet attractive programme. Nowell synge we bothe al and som: A Feast of Christmas Music in Medieval England Resonus RES10293 Winter Tales (Works by Brian Eno, Vikingur Olafsson, Peter Gregson, Hania Rani et al)

1. O Holy Night

Based on a poem by the English poet Christina Rossetti, this carol was written sometime before 1872 in response to a magazine request for a Christmas poem. The poem became recognised as a carol after it appeared in The English Hymnalin 1906, with music by Gustav Holst. Autry, the singing cowboy, had the original recording on three of the most popular Christmas songs of the 20th century: “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “Frosty the Snowman” and “Here Comes Santa Claus (Right Down Santa Claus Lane).” Autry co-wrote the last song and sang them all with his languid, disarming tenor. Autry released a Christmas single every year during his peak years, and this anthology offers 26 different songs, all of them a pleasure to hear. —Geoffrey Himes Before she treaded ever so slightly into secular pop fare, Amy Grant was a giant in Christian music—and she’s still seen as such. There’s one branch of Christian music in particular that she does better than just about any pop star—Christmas music. A Christmas Album is unapologetically spiritual and sonically quite bold, full of sweeping orchestral arrangements, weird synthy pathways and twangy, down-home touchy-feelies (It’s impossible not to yearn for home when you hear “Tennessee Christmas,” whether you hail from the South or not) alike. I can’t readily supply another Christmas album that sounds like this one. The horns on jaunty instrumental number “Praise the King” sound like an actual choir of angels, and I’m convinced the spirited “Love Has Come” will thaw even the iciest hearts. If you need an album to play for the Scrooge in your life, you can’t go wrong with Amy Grant’s hearty Christmas masterpiece. —Ellen Johnson The BBC Music Magazine team gets hundreds of recordings passed across our desks every month – and Christmas is no different.

As winter bites, vocal ensemble Apollo 5 invites you to ‘coorie doon’ (Scots for 'nestle' or 'snuggle') with them and enjoy music of comfort and joy. Gathering together some of the best contemporary choral writing for the festive season, A Deep but Dazzling Darkness conjures up the barren beauty of leaf-stripped trees, the wonder of first snowfall, the magic of stars studding an ink-dark sky and many more captivating wintry images in sound.

16. Sussex Carol

A perfectly balanced seasonal feast, where kitsch – I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas – coexists with heartbreak set to weeping pedal steel guitar on Christmas Makes Me Cry, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer meets A Willie Nice Christmas, a weed-addled duet with Willie Nelson that urges listeners to get “higher than the angel on top of the tree”. 11. Loretta Lynn – Country Christmas (1966) The Choral Scholars of University College, Dublin recently marked their 20th anniversary, and Be All Merry is a celebration of the high standards they have reached under founding artistic director Desmond Earley. The recording mixes interesting arrangements of familiar tunes with contemporary works, including haunting Irish-language settings by Fionntán Ó Cearbhaill and Adhamhnán Mac Domhnaill.