The "Definitive Artist" Christmas Song List [Updated and Bumped for 2009!]

Karen and I started talking about this on the way to visit the Leahy clan for Thanksgiving this week, while listening to the Holly channel on the XM radio...we were talking about when you hear a Christmas song and whether it was THE artist for that song - when you say "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year", you think Andy Williams, even if it's Amy Grant singing it...so, here is our list of those songs and the artists WE think is THE artist - in some cases we can't agree, so we may list two or more artists:

1. Its The Most Wonderful... - Andy Williams
2. Blue Christmas - Elvis
3. White Christmas - Bing Crosby
4. The Christmas Song (1, 2) - Jim says Mel Torme (Mel wrote it), Karen says Nat King Cole (he recorded it 1st)
5. The Little Drummer Boy - The Harry Simeone Chorale
   
6. Ring Christmas Bells - Ray Conniff [JW note 2009: this is an update as I had attributed The Little Drummer Boy above to Ray Conniff's singers in '08, when it was Harry Simeone's singers instead. Er, they sorta sound the same!]
   
7. Rudolph (1, 2) - Gene Autry, The Temptations (we both agree that we can't decide between the two)
8. I'll Be Home For Christmas - Bing Crosby
9. Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! - Dean Martin (got to sneak Dean-O in here)
10. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas - Nat King Cole
11. Feliz Navidad - Jose Feliciano
12. Mele Kalikimaka - Jimmy Buffett
    
13. Silver Bells - Jim says Elvis (I'm sneaking this one in!)
14. Frosty The Snowman (1, 2, 3) - Burl Ives (tho Jim likes the Cocteau Twins' and the Jackson5's versions) Do we add Jimmy Durante since he did the version for the TV movie we all remember?
15. Please Come Home For Christmas - The Eagles (tho Karen has a well-known dislike for the Eagles)
    
16. Santa Claus Is Coming To Town - Bruce Bringsteen [UPDATE by Jim 08DEC08 - I had to include this version by Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, as this is the version that I grew up with in my house.
17. Happy Christmas (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)- John Lennon (But Jim really likes The Alarm's version, and has performed this version back in the day. For 2009, I've added The Corrs, U2, and Maroon5 versions.)
18. Sleigh Ride - The New Christy Minstrels, or pick your favorite instrumental version.
19. Winter Wonderland (1, 2) - lots of good ones, but the Darlene Love and Elvis versions really stand out.
    

Can you think of any more? Do you think we're wrong? And if we missed anything, then check out 77Santas or Ear Farm (Ear Farm is now here). ['09 update: you can also check out this wikipedia page of an 'incomplete' listing of x-mas songs and the artists that made them famous. You can also check out this 8tracks.com search on the subject for the latest and greatest mixes...]

BONUS: To help with any lingering Black Friday shopping, here's a soundtrack for the day:

OSV

We had a wonderful time today at Old Sturbridge Village with friends from church. My favorite spot was the Bixby House (though I've had this song in my head since visiting the potter), but the kids seem to have liked the visitor center where they can dress up the best. Though, if you ask Caroline, her favorite part was me dropping my cup of hot chocolate onto the ground. It figures. =-)
We hope to land a membership - for any of you that are local - it's very definitely worth the membership. We were there for four hours and didn't even get through half of the museum. A family could easily spend a day a month there and not do even close to everything they have to offer.

CJ and Callie dressing up

Brenda and I had fun letting them wait on us!


I dug right back into my country girl roots and got comfortable doing the milking!

Brenda did her best to try to get Sam into costume to no avail...

And the Carolines did what they do best - giggled a lot and had fun!

Friday Morning

And we're off on a "boat ride". I think it's going to be a good day!


Here is some of the other craziness that has been happening her the past few weeks. I'll be glad when our schedules can get back to some form of regularity.

The Finished Product: Lazy Daisy Cupcakes!

Caroline icing the cupcakes with yellow frosting:









After Mommy put malted milk balls in the centers of the cupcakes and Daddy carefully cut marshmallows into little white petals, Caroline the artist was let free to put petals onto her daisies:








The final product:





We enjoyed a few with some friends from down the street and are saving the rest for special occasions over the next few days!

Tea Party And Making Lazy Daisy Cupcakes

Our two now-recovering children were hard at work setting up a morning tea yesterday in their PJ's:





Here are Mama and Caroline making Lazy Daisy Cupcakes, which CJ has been wanting to make for weeks now!

A Long Week

We have entered again the season of illness.
The season, that for some reason, Sam and Caroline take it upon themselves to lick every doorknob, touch every used kleenex and play with kid with green buggers within a five mile radius in hopes of bringing a new and exciting virus home.
They have succeeded. Between the two kids this week there were four cases of conjunctivitis, three ear infections and two raging cases of stomach upset (I'll spare you the details).
It has been soooo much fun.
Jim and I have split squads work-wise with one of us working in the AM and the other in the PM, so we've barely seen each other all week.
We've had "emergency nights" with the kids camping out in our room. They start out on the floor, but always end up in bed with us. I think we need a bigger bed.
I hope this week is much less eventful.

The Wiggles

We did it.
And we survived it.
But most surprisingly, we all enjoyed it.
We indulged the kids (as their Christmas present) and went to go see the Wiggles at the Centrum.
We didn't tell the Sam and Caroline we were going until we sat down to dinner that night and they were so excited they could barely sit. We were lucky to get them stand still long enough to take their picture.
Sam was so eager for the concert to start:
They loved playing air guitar with Murray.
They loved Jeff and Anthony, too. Especially when Jeff fell asleep.
Mommy liked Sam. =-)
Here is CJ dancing to the Strong Song:

Despite our reservations, it was a wonderful time and we would definitely go again. But not too soon. I'm just getting "Dr Knickerbocker" out of my head.

Noise

Caroline hates loud noises.
Auditory defensiveness, I think the term is.
To the point where she is just starting to flush the toilet without covering her ears. Forget about using a hair or hand dryer around her. She just runs away.
I used to have to wait until she was in a sound sleep to vacuum when she was younger - she would freak out.
Sam, however, definitely does not have this aversion. The louder, the better (he believes in this theory when he throws a tantrum, too). He loves the vacuum.
To the point where it takes me twice as long to vacuum because he does things like this and I have to steer around him (and mind you, the vacuum is on):

Nakedness

We tend to go through phases in this house.
The most recent one involves both children stripping off their clothes when it's time to change into jammies and running like wild people throughout the upstairs. The event then culmintes into bathies.
It keeps up entertained.

Sunday Afternoon

Jim is trying to fix the outdoor lights, so I figured I would do a bit of blogging while both (YES BOTH) children are sleeping.
After church we took advantage of the weather and raked. I can't remember having a nicer November day in a very long time (remember this?).

Friday Morning

I'm sitting here with Sam on my lap trying to do a little blogging. We're listening to XM radio - the kids really, really like the 40s station (who knew that Bob Dylan didn't do the first version of "You Belong to Me"?). They're going to be the only kids at school that can sing the Andrews Sisters! It's too funny to watch them try to dance.
We're trying to settle back into a routine after a very busy week. I don't know if it was Halloween, both sets of grandparents visiting, me working an extra day or the Wiggles concert. But everyone seems a bit out of sorts and I'm trying to catch up with laundry, cleaning, and snuggle time with the kids. Snuggles take priority. =-)
Unfortunately, I can't upload pictures right now. We'll figure out the technical difficulties and get them up soon.

Halloween!

We are slowly recovering from Halloween and the time change. Who knew that one hour could make such a difference?

We had a wonderful time last night - Nina and Pops and Grampy and Grampa came down to take the kids trick-or-treating. So besides being high from the sugar, Sam and Caroline were flying high having both sets of their adored grandparents around. Sam just looked from Pops to Grampa saying "Pee-paw? Pee-paw?", as if he couldn't quite grasp that they were both in the same room.

Try as we might to get Sam in the Nemo costume that Caroline wore, we were unsuccessful - so he ended up wearing his Superman jammies. Caroline was the Queen of Hearts (again). This is not to be confused with being "clean of heart", which we talked about at church this morning - and to which Caroline promptly replied (not in a church voice, mind you), "The Queen of Hearts? Thats ME!"

We are loving our new camera, especially since we saw it in a store for $40 more than what we paid for it directly from Kodak. So far the pictures have been very good. It does a better job helping me keep up with the kids than the older version.

The kids had a red letter day mail-wise on Friday. Caroline got a new sweater ("Mama - it's the best colors!") and they both got Halloween beanies. We could hardly contain the excitement in the house - it was a bit crazy - but a lot of fun to watch. Christmas should be a hoot! CJ loves her new sweater, but was less thrilled about having to stand next to Sam to have her picture taken.

We're almost done raking the yard - only a couple more passes and we'll be all set. I suppose the good thing about the ice storm in December and losing so many trees is that there are a LOT less leaves this year.

As usual, the kids had a wonderful time with their grandparents this weekend...


Caroline continues to hone her sense of fashion...

And...the kids continue to be so wonderfully cute that it makes my heart ache! =-)