After its original release on Cadet Records in 1966, Have Yourself a Soulful Little Christmas was out of print for years until a 1992 reissue. With pensive, meditative, precise playing, it's a must-have and features a definitive jazz hit version of "Little Drummer Boy."© David A. Milberg & Michael G. Nastos /TiVo

No living composer is more closely associated with the Christmas season than John Rutter, whose piece Shepherd's Pipe Carol, first placed him on the map of Yule some 35 or so Christmases ago. Rutter is the primary artistic force behind Collegium Records, which in 2002 made a trip to the vaults and culled together The John Rutter Christmas Album. It is the eighth collection of Christmas music with Rutter issued by Collegium, and before you cry "Noël oversaturation!" it is good to know three things about it. Firstly, it is mostly compiled from the Collegium Christmas Day in the Morning and Christmas with the Cambridge Singers, both titles that are no longer available on CD. Secondly, The John Rutter Christmas Album consists entirely of Rutter's own Yuletide-centric original compositions and arrangements. Finally, there are two brand new recordings on this CD. Stand out tracks here are Wexford Carol, Nativity Carol, What Sweeter Music, and the newly recorded selections Dormi Jesu and Love Came Down at Christmas. One is a little surprised that Collegium did not take advantage of the occasion to re-record some selections that didn't turn out quite so well the first time, particularly Jesus Child and I Saw Three Ships, both of which suffer from ragged coordination, or the lack of it, between choir and orchestra. The John Rutter Christmas Album could be better sequenced than it is; heard beginning to end, it bogs down somewhat at about the beginning of the last third. Nevertheless, Rutter's contribution to Christmas music is unique, and this is a nice survey of it, with only one other collection of its kind available, namely Polyphony's John Rutter: Music for Christmas on Hyperion. So get out the Yule log, the Wassail bowl, and do consider inviting Rutter to your Christmas feast. The dish he brings with The John Rutter Christmas Album is a tasty one indeed. © TiVo

Because no artist's career is truly complete without a holiday album, Sarah McLachlan took yet another step toward establishing her place in sentimental adult contemporary radio history with Wintersong. For the most part, the singer chooses the darker, more melancholic, and "wintry" pieces to cover (there's no "Joy to the World" or "Angels We Have Heard on High," for example), focusing as much on the Christmas season and the general feel of the holiday as on its religious connotations. She brings together the folk spiritual "Mary Mary" -- also called "Virgin Mary" when covered by Joan Baez on her 1966 Noël or "Mary What You Gonna Call That Pretty Little Baby" when a black gospel song -- and the traditional "The First Noel," showing off not only her own impressive range but her ability to adapt to different vocal styles while still remaining wholly herself. Her version of Gordon Lightfoot's "Song for a Winter's Night," which was originally released on the 1994 Miracle on 34th Street soundtrack (and then on McLachlan's Rarities, B-Sides & Other Stuff), is pretty and sweet, using as acoustic guitar as well as layers and layers of vocal harmonies to create a sense of space and warmth, and her cover of Joni Mitchell's "River" is lovely, too, using a guitar and arpeggiated synths to push the song sadly along. The synths, in fact, are used frequently on Wintersong, sometimes in their string form on "O Little Town of Bethlehem" or "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," which works nicely, but more often as slightly new agey background effects that get a little tedious, especially considering the fact McLachlan has always been able to carry herself on more organic instrumentation, and sound good doing it, too. She does manage to just stick to only the sad, reflective piano chords on which she has earned her living -- nice in their simplicity -- on the title track, the one original song on the album, which sounds a lot, both thematically and musically, like "River," using Christmas as a way to contemplate a lover ("And this is how I see you/In the snow on Christmas morning..../Oh I miss you now, my love, merry Christmas," she sings). McLachlan's voice sounds great, and her interpretations stick pretty close to the originals while still expressing her own artistic individuality (with the exception of "What Child Is This [Greensleeves]," in which she goes too far, taking liberties with the melody and changing the song too much); but in making everything so soft and ethereal, instead of increasing their poignancy (which is certainly a goal of hers), she kills some of the songs' immediacy and power, unfortunately rendering Wintersong a little lifeless, albeit soothing, at the end.© Marisa Brown /TiVo

Carrie Underwood's first Christmas album is a stately, sober affair. Part of this is due to the pomp and circumstance Greg Wells -- a Grammy winner for his work on The Greatest Showman: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack -- lends to the production. Everything on My Gift proceeds at a steady pace, adorned with very few bells and whistles, a sparse choice that helps highlight how Underwood chooses to sing primarily religious-themed material. The exceptions to this rule are the John Stephens/Toby Gad number "Hallelujah," sung as a duet with John Legend, and the secular standard "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," selections that highlight how the other nine songs are more somber celebrations, including her new original "Let There Be Peace." Not all of it is tasteful -- having her young son Isaiah Fisher sing a bit of "The Little Drummer Boy" conjures memories of Clint Holmes' "Playground in My Mind" -- but enough of it is to make this a soundtrack for an understated, rather elegant holiday gathering.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

El Niño is an ambitious project that could have easily become overblown in execution, but thankfully that is not the case. This warm and sometimes moving oratorio humanizes the Nativity story by emphasizing Mary's perspective and the miracle of birth. The texts are in English, Spanish, and Latin and are based on a variety of sources, including the New Testament Apocrypha and contemporary Latin American poetry. The music also incorporates a wide range of styles and influences, including jazz, show tunes, and Handel's "Messiah," but it coheres under Adams' distinctive rhythmic approach. It begins with the steady repetition of a D minor chord, followed by the introduction of polyrhythms and dissonance, as well as countertenors Brian Cummings and Dan Brubeck. Both of them, as well as the third countertenor, Steven Rickards, give golden performances on this album. The same is true for the three soloists, mezzo soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, soprano Dawn Upshaw, and baritone Willard White, who are all cast in flexible roles. For example, Upshaw sings the role of the Virgin Mary in the second piece, "Hail, Mary, Gracious!" (adapted from The Play of Annunciation from Martial Rose's version of The Wakefield Mystery Plays), and mezzo soprano Lieberson gives a fiery performance in the same role in the third piece, "La Anunciacion," which is based on the poetry of Rosario Castellanos (who is also the source of "Se Habla de Gabriel," "Memorial de Tlatelolco," and "A Palm Tree"). The next three pieces, including "Magnificat" (which features an assured, sensitive performance by Upshaw), draw on St. Luke for their text. White makes his first appearance as Joseph on the seventh piece, "Now She Was Sixteen Years Old," and also appears as Herod later on; he effectively conveys both Joseph's confusion and Herod's anger in his forceful performances. The more reflective second half of this album isn't as immediately accessible as the first, and sometimes suffers from cursory narrative passages, but it also benefits from delicate touches and mostly preserves the emotional power of the first half.© TiVo

The English choral Christmas album has tended toward innovation, and it's good to hear that there's still a place for the traditional kind, with lightly embroidered traditional hymns, just ever so slightly wobbly, but utterly endearing, boy sopranos, and strongly diatonic Christmas compositions that are consistently and simply rapt in mood. That's what you get here from the Choir of Her Majesty's Chapel Royal, whose 17 "gentlemen" and "boys" under director Huw Williams are a smaller group than most of their competition and lend an attractively intimate quality to the proceedings. There's a high proportion of well-known carols, and O Little Town of Bethlehem, in the harmonization by Vaughan Williams with a new top line for the youngsters, makes a good place to start when sampling. Even the slightly contemporary pieces, such as Stravinsky's 1934 Ave Maria, are resolutely simple in style. This release follows in the steps of the choir's 2006 Carols from Buckingham Palace release, but is even more modest and calmer in its effect. Probably the album covers no new ground, but it is expertly recorded in the Chapel Royal itself, and it is entirely satisfying. © TiVo

Christmas with Boney M is a 2007 re-release of a highly sought-after Christmas record by '70s Euro-disco legends Boney M which featured disco adaptations of traditional Christmas songs like "When a Child Is Born," "White Christmas," "Jingle Bells," "Little Drummer Boy," and many others. The reissued version adds a number of unreleased tracks.© Sergey Mesenov /TiVo

"The same old stories, same old songs/We dust them off when Christmas comes," Mary Chapin Carpenter sings in "Christmas Carol," a song she wrote for her first holiday album, Come Darkness, Come Light: Twelve Songs of Christmas, and while the line resonates in context, it also stands out because it sums up what Carpenter has chosen not to do with this disc. While Christmas albums tend to be dominated by cheerful but rote interpretations of holiday favorites, especially from artists with a history on the country charts, Carpenter wrote or co-wrote six new songs for Come Darkness, Come Light, and though there are three traditional numbers on the album, the usual suspects such as "White Christmas" and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" are conspicuous in their absence. Come Darkness, Come Light instead focuses on the more thoughtful and spiritual side of the season -- "Bells Are Ringing" ponders symbols of faith in a chaotic world, "Christmas Carol" records the thoughts of a casual believer who is more concerned with Peace on Earth than the trappings of the Yuletide season, and "Christmas Time in the City" tells a fable of a street musician struggling to make a few bucks during the shopping season. Come Darkness, Come Light is the rare Christmas album that's made with thinking adults in mind, and Carpenter and co-producer John Jennings weren't afraid to make a record that's as thoughtful in its music as its lyrics; the arrangements are spare and tasteful, conveying the beauty of the melodies without cluttering them with gingerbread, and Carpenter's vocals are heartfelt without sounding histrionic, reflecting the inward contemplation that's a clear part of this music. Come Darkness, Come Light is a brave and beautiful collection of songs that dares to run counter to what most folks expect from a Christmas album, and it asks some questions worth pondering about the meaning behind the annual celebration while mirroring the simple joys of a snowy night.© Mark Deming /TiVo

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Choral music has always played a significant and central role at Belfast Cathedral, since its consecration in 1904. This strong choral tradition continues to this day with the recently formed all-adult, fully professional vocal ensemble. This "new" cathedral choir brings together some of the finest singers in Northern Ireland who lead the liturgy and worship of Belfast Cathedral and are featured here in their debut album for Resonus Classics. Featuring a varied programme of seasonal carols from composers including Elizabeth Poston, John Rutter and Philip Ledger, this album celebrates Christmas from Northern Ireland’s national cathedral. © Resonus Classics

Puerto Rican singer and guitarist José Feliciano's 1970 Christmas album yielded not only the biggest hit of his career, but one of the most enduringly popular Christmas pop songs of all time in the eternal "Feliz Navidad." Originally released by RCA Victor under the title José Feliciano, it later bore the name of its signature track, Feliz Navidad, when BMG reissued it on CD in 2001 along with three additional tracks ("Las Posadas," "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town," and "O Come All Ye Faithful") that hadn't made the cut the first time around. Leading off with "Feliz Navidad," Feliciano's only original song of the set, the album also includes versions of holiday carols and pop classics like "The First Noel," "Little Drummer Boy," and "White Christmas," all arranged in the guitarist's distinctive Latin pop style.© Timothy Monger /TiVo

This is the holiday disc of the year, a slice of merry old English tradition at its best. Reversing the usual American glee club order of things, conductor John Rutter and his Cambridge Singers open with seasonal carols and then, when listeners' ears have been limbered up by Rutter's own arrangements and those by David Willcocks and other figures from the English choral world, moves on to Renaissance pieces and modern compositions by Warlock, Tavener, Britten, Kenneth Leighton, and Vaughan Williams (the Fantasia on Christmas Carols). Even those cool to Rutter's own choral music will concede his skills as a conductor; the Cambridge Singers, at a perfect size between chamber choir and distant, vast cathedral group, sound both beautifully precise and sweetly lyrical under his baton. Rutter also contributes another of the disc's most attractive features; his liner notes are packed with enjoyable information and trivia that illuminate something of the paths familiar carols took to public consciousness, of how today's corpus of Christmas carols resulted from the combined efforts of folklorists, choir leaders, and compiler/editors of years past. "[L]ike so much of the best Christmas music," writes Rutter, Vaughan Williams' Fantasia "seems to encompass both mystery and joy." Much the same might be said of this top-notch seasonal collection, accessible to all yet filled with subtleties for the discerning. © TiVo