Stacy, I am with you (and Huckabee) all the way on the subject of Christmas carols and holiday songs, although I would take it a little further. I find the holiday songs you list written during the 40s, 50s, and 60s somehow soul-crushing in their commercialism. In particular, I have to avoid “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” in order to stave off a kind of holiday malaise.

In my opinion it’s tough to beat out “Silent Night.” My grandfather always used to play an old record with a version of “Stille Nacht” recorded, incredibly, by the workers of a BMW factory in I think Munich, unaccompanied. There’s an honesty to that recording that the overproduced and overcommercialized Andy Williams (who sings the version of “Wonderful Time of the Year” that most stores play) sorely lacks.

Though I have to give a nod to “It Came Upon A Midnight Clear,” since the author, the Rev. Edmund Sears, lived on the same street I did in South Lancaster, Massachusetts. Although he is said to have actually written the song in another town nearby, Lancaster residents always claim that he did in fact write it on a clear Lancaster Christmas Eve, so I won’t argue with them.

That being said, I don’t let a Christmas go by without a little Trans-Siberian Orchestra, especially “Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24.”