Customer Reviews

The Christmas Album

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is quite simply, a great compilation album. The selection of artists and their renditions are wonderful. The album has a great rythm and flow. Buy this one, you won;t be dissapointed!

My family owned this compilation on vinyl and played it every year over and over. As my children are growing up I wanted to play it for them but found the album to be in less than desirable condition. I was so excited when I found it in CD format that I bought one for my dad and sisters,too. You know it's a good compilation if it's still around after more than 20 years!

This CD was a great surprise to me. I spend Xmas alone & music makes my Christmas a happy one. The music is uplifting & brings back memories of an Old Fashioned Xmas...

Highly Recommend This One! Merry Christmas Everyone!

I love this CD. It has all of the traditional carols sung by traditional artists. I first got this compilation on cassette and wore it out listening to it every year, especially when traveling to relatives' homes over the Christmas holidays. I even bought cassettes for my kids when they moved away from home. When we bought a car that did not have a cassette player, I bought the CD the next Christmas. Now, I am buying a CD for my son who needs it on CD to play for his newly growing family.

i grew up listening to this very album every year. i know every song and they are all close to my heart. great cd.

Like most people on this page, I remember listening to this wonderful collection growing up. My parents owned the original vinyl album and that's the one I tried to find on cd. Being called simply "The Christmas Album" makes it very hard to find amongst the thousands of cd's that have those words in their name. What made it even harder, was the appalling new sleeve art this cd comes in. Gone is the list of artists's names, in that gracious font, with those beautiful, nostalgic storybook capitals.
Instead, we get a generic Santa-with-little-girl picture, that reminds me of a Coca Cola ad, more than anything else. The cut-and-paste candy canes all over it cheapen it even more. But what surprised me most, is that the names of all the great artists on this album don't appear anywhere on the cover. Not on the front, not on the back (just the titles of the tracks, some of which appear on practically every Christmas album) and not on the cd itself, which does list all the song titles and their writers (!). It's not until you actually take the inlay out of the case that you discover that in fact you get renditions by artists like Barbara Streisand, Andy Williams, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash, and Mahalia Jackson, for example.
I wonder how many people have picked up this cd in a store, looked at the credits, shrugged, and put it back, because they have no idea what they are buying. Very, very odd.
So, that concludes my complaining about the packaging. The music itself is wonderfully diverse, with instrumental, choral and popular music taking turns. Yet, the album is wonderfully balanced, with the whole project having an air of class and sophistication about it. Some lesser played gems like Christmas Bells by Patti Page and the glorious orchestral version of Joy To The World by Percy Faith And His Orchestra make this collection stand out from all the others. If you want one, timeless Christmas collection, with pretty much all the classic Christmas songs, done in different styles, I highly recommend this cd. I have deduced one star from my rating however, due to my disappointment with the new artwork.

We owned this album on vinyl when I was growing up, and unfortunately, it's long since disappeared. Finding it on CD was great as this is one of the best compilations of classic Christmas carols. My only regret is that it doesn't include the great foreword that came with the vinyl version. I wish I could remember who wrote that foreword as it was one of the most eloquent and bittersweet descriptions of how the meaning of Christmas changes as you grow up.

Got this album in 1980ties from my father. It's a very christmassy collection - you can almost hear and see the snow falling on christmas eve. I got it on vinyl as a gift from my father together with World of christmas carols (Bach choir) og even today it's not christmas without those two. Christmas album had fewer songs on it in vinyl, but thank god for itunes - I just made a playlist. 5 stars for sure...

I have literally been searching for this album for so many years. I never knew the title of the album and had been dying to know what it was so I could get a copy of it. This Christmas album has always reminded me of growing up in the 80's and sitting next to the Christmas tree waiting for Santa. Nostalgia for me I guess.

There are so many great classics like Barbra Streisand's playful rendition of Jingle Bells and Robert Goulet's dreamy Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas. Of course no one can resist the classic Christmas icon Berl Ives singing It Came Upon The Midnight Clear! I think that the one that always had tugged at my Christmas heart strings was Johnny Cash's The Little Drummer Boy. It still bring me to tears listing to the story of a child drummer playing for Christ.

All attempts to make a Christmas album since this one are failed ones.

I was born in 1985, and my family has been listening to this CD every Christmas morning since 1987 as we opened our presents. It is by far the GREATEST collection of Christmas music of all time. Every song on the album is the best version that exists of each song (except for the Barbara Streisand "Jingle Bells?" which I've always skipped past because I can't stand that hag).

Make this album your family's new Christmas tradition. It is absolutely perfect.