re: Let's decide the definitive Best Christmas Song on the OT - Nominations

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Nah dawg.

Add your songs as you please.

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Thanks. I'll do my top ten in each, secular first.

For the secular to qualify it's very simple-it's just not Christmas until you've heard them one or more times and find it difficult not to join in whether you're in your car, at work or at the Mall.

I've kept personal indulgence to a minimum and put those towards the bottom of the list.

Secular:
1: White Christmas-Bing Crosby I can't see how this isn't indisputably number one. This scene from the film White Christmas gives the song and the movie it's sentimental and poignant context which culminates in its fabulous closing scene.
2. The Christmas Song-Nat King Cole
Sit back, put your feet up, put some Pennsylvania Dutch Eggnog (or Benchmark) in a hot cup of coffee and listen to the lyrics and Cole's phrasing and let the pleasant nostalgia of Christmas past and the present joys of this season lighten your heart.
3. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas-Judy Garland
It's undeniably a season that, for some, is one of sadness, loneliness, separation from loved ones, frustrated hopes, and sometimes, memories of deep loss exacerbated by nearly two decades of war. This song doesn't run from those feelings and realities but holds out hope for better times and a happier future surrounded once again by our loved ones and "faithful friends who are dear to us, gather near to us-and say-Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas..."
4. Silver Bells-Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney
The Old Crooner and the lovely Rosemary Clooney conjur up sights and sounds of Christmas in the city. Only fair to offer an alternative to Bing- The King.
5. It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas-Johnny Mathis
As the Day draws nearer, the song and title perfectly set the mood and gives voice to our bonhomie.
6. Sleigh Ride-Andre' Kastelanetz or, for the lyrics, Sleigh Ride-Johnny Mathis .
This is just too Christmasy to pass up. Wait for a cold night, wrap up, put the top down on the MGB, put this on your 8-track and take your sweetie for a drive on Lakeshore Drive.
7. Christmas Time Is Here-Vince Guaraldi Trio (from the album A Charlie Brown Christmas )
Simply a personal favorite. A bit unfairly I'd submit the entire album. In addition to setting the table for the true Christmas message, it's fabulous jazz in its own right.There's a little bit of Chuck in me(and all of us I suspect) at this time of year when the pressures and excessive commercialism of Christmas is "at our throats again" as Noel Coward put it. But the animated film, Guaraldi's soundtrack, and Linus's recitation of St. Luke's incomparable Nativity always brings me back to center.
8. Please Be Home For Christmas-Charles Brown
One Christmas long ago found Mr. M. sadly and unwillingly dropped by his first "love". Charles Brown's song and I found each other and it became a dirge I embraced. Only from faithful friends pressing on me a very pretty girl I was unaware admired me from afar did I recover and enjoy the festivities of the Season. This song is very much a personal indulgence. But a great one despite all that.
9. The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)-David Seville and Alvin and The Chipmunks
Another personal indulgence. Winner of three Grammys in 1958. Best Comedy, Best Children's, and Best Engineered in the non-classical category. Good memories pre-1958 and '58-'62 of Christmas with Mom's peerless Christmas Tree decorated with fascinating glass ornaments of harlequins, Nutcrackers, fabulous birds, globes of all sizes frosted, some with winter scenes and some with Nativities, lights on, in, and among the branches and silver tinsel drapped individually and perfectly to mimic icicles that reflected the lights back on themselves and the beautiful ornaments. Crowned with a hand-blown star. And underneath, packages for a small boy to open, each perfectly wrapped and bowed by hand, wrapped in gorgeous paper of snow men, angels, and loving parents and admirers gazing adoringly at a baby in a manger. Mom and Dad had stayed up late every Christmas Eve for years when I was a child to wrap and place presents carefully to blame all Christmas happiness on Santa taking almost none for themselves. Only after I was married and had children of my own did I begin to fully appreciate the breadth and depth of my parents' love.
10. All I Want For Christmas (Is You)-Vince Vance and The Valiants
Mrs. M. (a beautiful country girl-one of six siblings) and I (an only child born in Baptist Hospital in the Crescent City) had been married nearly a decade when this Yat Christmas Anthem was released. Since that time, I've appropriated its theme that if you love and are loved, you need little else than the object of your affection. It is always a song that in my mind and heart is dedicated to the long suffering Mrs. M., the "Angel atop my tree".