(you can listen to Songs for Christmas in its entirety here, which is an activity I’d recommend. merry christmas, all.)

I don’t think I’ll be making any bold proclamation if I say that Christmas music is uniformally pretty lame. There is, of course, a nostalgic/comfort factor to the old classics, but they were designed (I assume) to be universally appealing, and I’d say that anything that is designed to be universally appealing will be pretty lame as a rule. The lowest common denominator is not a bastion of tasteful creativity.

However, over the 10+ years that I’ve been having Christmas outside of my parents’ house, an interesting thing has happened – we still listen to some of the old classics, because we’re not robots, and nostalgia can be a valuable emotion. But also, we’ve started playing a lot more of things that, I hope, will become classics for our kids – Sufjan Stevens, Low, David Bazan, Aimee Mann, The Boy Least Likely To, etc. Continue reading »