My 2025 Christmas Mix

“There are two kinds of music: the good kind and the other kind." ~ Duke Ellington

I make a Christmas Mix every year and send it to friends and family. I’ve always loved Christmas music, but I learned early on that the good stuff was few and far between – so long ago I started making my own Christmas compilations on my reel-to-reel tape recorder – recording the best songs from the five hundred or so vinyl Christmas albums I’d dug up in used record stores and thrift shops all across Canada. The invention of cassette tapes was a revelation.

I’m not sure when I finally started sharing my cassette Christmas Mixes with friends and family. Bob White, my buddy since high school, told me he found a cassette from me labelled “Christmas 1987.” At first, I’d copy the mix from cassette to cassette one at a time, print cover art with song titles and cut it out by hand to fit the plastic case. I continued to make the inserts every year but eventually found a guy who bulk copied sermons, using ten cassette machines at a time. Then I burned CDs. Then I uploaded the mix to Dropbox so people could download the files. Now I make Spotify and Apple Music playlists.  I’ve shared a new Christmas Mix every year since at least 1987.

At first, I bought the albums or CDs. Then I searched for keywords like “Christmas” and “Holiday”on apps like Limewire. These days, I visit Apple Music and Spotify to check out all the new releases. There are hundreds and hundreds of new holiday recordings every year and listening through them all takes a few weeks. Because I like to stay up to date on new artists and songs, that process becomes a mostly enjoyable and enlightening musical meditation for me. And I get a real burst of joy when I discover something new and great.

My friend Tom Harrison (may his name forever stand) was the only person who really enjoyed talking about the process of selecting and sequencing the songs. Music was his passion and profession, and he made Christmas mixes too – very different from mine but similarly heartfelt and carefully considered. I miss talking to him about them. I miss him generally. My intention here is to ramble on about this year’s mix, sharing thoughts and impressions, as I would have done with Tom.

Here are the links, so you can listen along, if you want to:

Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/ca/playlist/christmas-mix-2025/pl.u-ZmblzErt0bR1YP

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1Nh4RuF9iMkG6shXKD5ou6?si=5cba745215664cef

1. Leave The Christmas Lights On For Me - Brad Paisley

Every few years there’s a new Christmas album released that becomes the musical backbone of that year’s mix. Micheal Buble, Brett Eldridge, Eric Clapton, Glen Campbell, Nat (King) Cole and others have made albums that express a deep respect for tradition while often adding enduring new songs to the Christmas canon. ‘Snow Globe Town’ is one of these albums. I chose ‘Leave The Christmas Lights On For Me’ to start the mix because the opening lines spoke directly to me.

“I've been on the road for three weeks now playing sold out shows

Driving back through Arkansas, we ran into snow

I thought I'd be there in time for dinner Christmas Eve

But there's a jackknifed rig blocking 40 East”

In the seventies, Trooper rented a classic, but old and unreliable, tour bus for a eighteen show winter run in the American midwest. While the snow and below-zero temperatures didn’t threaten Christmas specifically, I do recall fearing for my life a couple of times. I bought a Christmas tree ornament - Santa’s Boot covered in red and white sequins – at a truck stop that had loomed up like a warm highway oasis on one of those perilous drives.

You can hear the care and effort that went into recording this album. The arrangements sound alive and well-suited to the songs. Brad Paisley’s singing supports and authenticates the lyrics and his guitar playing ranges from respectfully tasteful to delightfully extreme. The whole record makes me smile, and fills me with that difficult to describe Christmas spirit.

2. Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town - Brad Paisley

Because I opened with a new Christmas song, I followed it with a classic. A second Brad Paisley song felt natural. A solid “meat-and-potatoes” arrangement and performance.

3. White Christmas - Joe Nichols

Another classic. Another meat-and-potatoes performance. This one is an interesting combination of a traditional country singing style with an almost jazz arrangement and playing. I’m not completely sold on the harmonica.

4. Merry and Bright - Graham Kendall

I checked her name several times, it’s really Graham Kendall. This beautiful new song seems to transcend genre and I expect to see it covered a lot in the coming years (like “Merry Christmas, Everyone’ from a few years back). I also really like Graham’s heartfelt vocal. The song itself is simple and hymn-like. I imagine it being sung in an Irish pub by everyone in the room.

5. All I Want For Christmas Is You (feat. Justin Kawika Young) - Jake Shimabukuru

At first I was totally charmed by someone taking on this song with just a Ukulele but then Mr. Young’s soulful voice added a second happy surprise. The fact that the two of them (and maybe a bass?) can propel this track along like they do is both impressive and fun.

6. Winter Wonderland - Meghan Trainor

Another Ukulele! Meghan Trainor is a great singer and this is a sparse, classy arrangement of another classic. In the last five or six years, many contemporary singers have released Christmas performances that prioritize vocal stylings (raspy, cute, melismatic) over a straight-forward, unadorned interpretation of the song. Meghan Trainor threads that needle perfectly.

7. Merry Christmas Baby - Koe Wetzel

While the arrangement and musical performance is pretty standard, I like Joe Wetzel’s voice and his small but tasteful variations on the melody.

8. Happy, Happy Christmas - Ingrid Michaelson

I love this one. The joy of finding great new songs and recordings during the culling process is one of the reasons I keep doing this. The track opens with a brave and beautiful combination of strings and vocal, and by the time her perfectly honest voice gets to “Live well and let go” I’m absolutely hopeful that I can do both, while also feeing surprisingly emotional. I read on Apple Music that Ingrid Michaelson is a huge fan of Christmas … and I hear that. Her voice is the perfect nexus of precision and feeling, which is my definition of a great singer. I swear I can hear her smile a bit during the first ”Happy, Happy Christmas”. I have to admit that I don’t love the “Ooh, Ooh, Ooh” that follows, but it’s a very small blemish in what I otherwise think is a perfect new Christmas song.

9. Christmas To Me - Riley Green

And, speaking of emotional, this one pulls on some very deep long-ago strings, reminding me of family Christmases from my distant past.

“And all them in-laws are showin' up late

For a five-star meal on a paper plate”

I’m often annoyed by lyrics that seek to manipulate our hearts but I don’t feel that with this one. Riley Green and his co-writers have made a good song and he sings it with heartfelt conviction. It’s slightly over-the-top sentimental, but what’s Christmas if there can’t be a little of that?

10. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas - Little Big Town

This starts as a professional and tasteful performance of another classic that kicks in when they get to “here we are as in olden days …”. It’s a great combination of voices in harmony and the track is deftly produced.

11. Silver Bells - Koe Wetzel

Another Joe Wetzel, also included because I like his voice. I nearly left this one out because of how he pronounces “sidewalk” as “sigh walk” … twice … but it’s a great old classic and a decent performance all round that picks up steam as it goes along.

12. Jingle Bells (feat. Kimié Miner, Paula Fuga & Ana Vee) - Jake Shimabukuru

Another from the same Jake Shimabukuru album as “All I Want For Christmas”.  It’s a spirited reggae arrangement with the hard-to-shake ear-worm “J-I-N-G-L-E Bells” refrain.

13. Falling Just Like The Snow - Brad Paisley

This might be my favourite new Christmas song this year. While ostensibly a country song, this melody and arrangement shares a lot in common with the sophisticated Cole Porter school of Christmas songwriting. There are many ways this performances could have gone overboard, but the band and singer hold the whole thing in perfect balance for the duration. Paisley’s voice is rich, his guitar playing technically melodic and the band is assured and authoritative. The lyric is charming in a very nineteen-fifties Christmassy way.

14. Perfect Christmas - S Club 7

I am not ashamed to admit that I like the hits of the Backstreet Boys - or that I always sing along with this awesomely poppy Christmas song by the British group formed by a guy who was fired as manager of The Spice Girls.

15. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas - Relient K

This is a very unusual version of the song, that I think is different enough from the Little Big Town version above that no one will notice it’s in the mix twice. And it’s short.

16. Long Live Christmas - Dan + Shay

This one was a borderline inclusion, but still fun. And it brings some variety to the mix - especially the country-rap section. It’s super poppy, merry and bright. I really like the modulation near the end and always smile at the audaciously incongruous rhyming of “God Bless Santa” with “Girls named Abigail and Hannah”.

17. Blue Christmas - Megan Moroney

Only about one-tenth of the new Christmas music I listen to every year ends up on my shortlist. When I’ve collected about forty songs that I like enough to consider for the final mix, I comb through them many times, moving them up and down into what eventually becomes the twenty-ish song final running order. I moved the Brad Paisley song to the top early on, but other songs flounder for a while before taking a place in the final list. This is one of those. Ultimately, it fit the moment sequence-wise, and is well sung and performed.

18. Jingle Bell Rock - Brad Paisley

Boom,  back to this year’s dependable through-line, Brad Paisley. This is a solid version of the song that chugs along confidently and features some great guitar playing.

19. Merry Christmas Everyone - Rend Collective

A “Northern Irish Christian folk rock worship band” covering a new Christmas song I like a lot - although I don’t understand why they chose to repeat the first line of the chorus. The song, as written, is much better without it.

20. Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! - Ingrid Michaelson

A classic version of another Christmas staple - with Michaelson choosing not to sing cute, like so many others have done with this song.

21. Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree - Sacha

Short and sweet

22. Dream a Dream of Christmas - Lydia Luce

A very sophisticated new Christmas song, beautifully arranged and performed. I love the string arrangement and Lydia Luce’s vocal control. Another one of my favourites in this mix.

23. The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire) - Brad Paisley

Closing out the mix are two more songs from the ‘Snow Globe Town’ album. This year’s mix is heavy with Country artists. This isn’t a choice as much as the outcome of choosing from all the new songs available and narrowing down the best ones. There were noticeably less Christmas releases this year and the majority of them were singles - often sounding quickly assembled for the holiday season. The country artists were the ones who stepped up disproportionally with committed, well-made songs and recordings honouring Christmas music traditions – like this one.

24. Christmas Time’s A-Comin’ - Brad Paisley

I closed out the mix with this barn-burner specifically for all my musician friends. Brad Paisley is a monster guitar player and he gets to stretch out here.

This is the first time I’ve shared the mix beyond my family and friends. I hope the three of you following along here found something to enjoy in either the music or my musings about it … or both.

Have a Merry Christmas with your family and friends!

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