Christmas Music -- the Best and the Worst

I love listening to Christmas music. There’s nothing like it to get me in the mood to do holiday tasks. In fact, it makes me feel so happy that it cheers me up when I have to do ordinary boring things like picking up toys and folding laundry. When I discovered that my cable television company has music channels that include an "all holiday music, all the time" channel, I was delighted. I’ve had that on as background music a lot lately. And listening to constant Christmas music has caused me to reflect that there is a LOT of Christmas music recorded, some great, some horrible.

Here are my opinions about the best and the worst:

Among the best:

Vince Guaraldi’s Charlie Brown Christmas music
"White Christmas" sung by Bing Crosby (of course, the classic!)
Pretty much any Christmas song sung by Rosemary Clooney
"Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire", sung by Mel Torme
"Pretty Paper" sung by Willy Nelson
Mele Kalikimaka sung by Bing Crosby -- how can you resist this goofy song?

Among the worst (and these are actually ones I’ve heard–I’m not making these up):

The Little Drummer Boy, sung by Bob Seger (and there are a lot of other really awful versions of this song, for some reason)
December Will be Magic Again, by Kate Bush
Please, Daddy, Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas, by John Denver
Santa, Baby sung by Calisa Flockhart

What are YOUR favorites?

And speaking of Christmas music... Did you know you can create a custom radio station, with your own favorite music, to play on your computer? This "Launch Music on Yahoo" site (check it out here LAUNCH: Music on Yahoo!) has all sorts of web radio stations...all sorts of holiday music, various genres of non-holiday music, even an all-lullaby music station! And there's the option that lets you pick your favorite artists and genres and create a custom station! Very cool!