--- slug: /post/the-ferrell-family-holiday-spectacular title: "The Ferrell Family Holiday Spectacular" description: "Isn't music just the best? Holiday music specifically is very tough to beat. For busy parents, the act of turning on Christmas music almost feels like a cheat code for a little passive holiday magic between the big events like putting up the tree and…" type: post status: published publish_date: '2025-12-14T18:42:27-05:00' updated_date: '2025-12-14T19:47:20-05:00' featured_image: /assets/images/Simple-Merry-Christmas-Photo-Collage-Christmas-Card-2.png og_type: article schema_type: BlogPosting robots: index,follow --- Isn't music just the best? Holiday music specifically is very tough to beat. For busy parents, the act of turning on Christmas music almost feels like a cheat code for a little passive holiday magic between the big events like putting up the tree and going to look at lights.  In the spirit of the season, here is a list of some of our favorite Christmas albums, playlists and radio stations. Some of these are specific to certain services (Apple Music, specifically) but a lot of them you can find anywhere. ## Holiday Albums ### Hanson - Snowed In I will admit that I'd never heard (or even heard of) this first entry in our list before Audra and I got together. This one is Audra's favorite by a mile and we always put it on when we're putting up our decorations. She has a lot of nostalgia for this one and I'll admit that it gives me the warm and fuzzies now too, though my memories are a lot more recent than most of hers. They've since issued a follow-up that is not nearly as good. ### Jonathan Coulton & John Roderick - One Christmas at a Time As a fan of **[John's other work](https://www.johnroderick.com),** the fact that we he worked on a Christmas album of *original songs* is still frankly remarkable to me. The songs are all catchy and a little silly and I love it. I look forward to it every year. ### Christopher Lee - Collected Works You read that right. Christopher Lee, otherwise known as Count Dooku, Dracula and Saruman the White, has multiple heavy metal Christmas albums. #### Darkest Carols, Faithful Sing #### A Heavy Metal Christmas Too #### A Heavy Metal Christmas ## Holiday Radio Stations We're *big* fans of radio (as in live, with a host) in the Ferrell house and Christmas is no exception! These are our favorite holiday stations. They're mostly on iHeart (free, ad-supported) but some are on Apple Music. You can listen to pretty much any iHeart station on their website but I much prefer Broadcasts if you're on any Apple device. ### iHeart - North Pole Radio It's Christmas music hosted by Santa, what else do you need?! No commercials! ### iHeart - Christmas No Santa DJ this time around but this is another awesome commercial free station. They have a **[bunch](https://www.iheart.com/live/iheart-christmas-4596/)** **[more](https://www.iheart.com/live/iheartchristmas-pop-10050/)** **[too](https://www.iheart.com/live/iheart-christmas-4596/)**! ## Apple Music - Holiday Hits During the holidays, Apple Music's Hits station is replaced by Holiday Hits and it's great mix of old and new Christmas music, with live hosts. ## Holiday Playlists Given the nature of playlists, these are all on Apple Music because that's what we use. That's why they're at the end! ### Punk Xmas Across this entire list, Punk Xmas is probably my favorite thing. We listen to this playlist **so much** every year, it immediately feels like *our* Christmas when we turn it on. ## The Crate (Christmas Edition) This is a bit more eclectic than the others (maybe not Punk Xmas) but The Crate is Apple's "rare gems" playlist, meant to emulate physically digging through a crate of vinyl records. They updated it for Halloween too and we absolutely *loved it*, so it was awesome to see them do the same for Christmas. --- And that's it! I hope these bring you as much joy as they do us!