The Ferrell Family Holiday Spectacular
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, 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 more too!
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!