As one who is a fan of the Christmas music, I thought I’d take a post to recommend a few great albums. But first, let me talk about where to go for music online. I’m a fan of iTunes, but iTunes can be limiting and expensive over time. It’s fine for that one album no one else has, but at $9.99 an album that is only okay quality (124kb) and DRM protected, it’s not really worth it.

I usually first check with the Russians. The site is called MP3Sparks.com and it’s excellent. The site is hosted in Russia and offers music for only a few bucks per album. To use the site you first buy credits, then choose your tunes and pick your format and bit rate. Depending on the quality you choose, the price can be as low as $2 an album. I usually go with the Variable Bit Rate and one of the profiles in the encoding dialog. The nice thing about the music is it’s all DRM free.

Second, if the Russians don’t have what I’m looking for I go to Amazon.com and their new MP3 Download section. Amazon doesn’t quite have the Russian pricing, but they are a bit cheaper than iTunes. The upside to Amazon is that they offer higher quality files than iTunes and they are all DRM free mp3’s.

Usually if an album is new and not widely popular, the Russians won’t have it yet, so I opt for Amazon. If Amazon doesn’t have it that usually means I have to bite the bullet and go with iTunes, but you gotta check the other sites first.

So with the where out of the way, let’s get onto some recommendations. First, Dave Koz did a Christmas album several years back that is a really good Smooth Jazz album called A Smooth Jazz Christmas. It’s got a lot of nice instrumental pieces, Koz is a saxophonist, with a variety of other Smooth Jazz artists like David Benoit, Peter White and Rick Braun. I just picked up this 2001 album when looking at Koz’s new Christmas album, which has a lot of the same songs. A Smooth Jazz Christmas seemed to get better reviews than his new one, so I went with it instead. One thing iTunes is good for, reviews.

Another great Smooth Jazz album is Boney James’ Christmas Present which was released this year. Boney James is also a saxophonist and on Christmas Present he collaborates with the likes of Anthony Hamilton, Angie Stone and Rick Braun. It’s a great, mellow yet festive Christmas album.

Okay, because I can’t resist, here are a few more great Christmas albums. If you like piano with a little soul check out Brian Culbertson’s A Soulful Christmas. An older album, but a great one is from the Rippington’s frontman Russ Freeman and it’s called Holiday.

If you’re not a Smooth Jazz fan, you might like The Brian Setzer Orchestra’s A Boogie Woogie Christmas. Maybe your more of a classic Jazz fan, then Diana Krall’s Christmas Songs album which came out last year is a must have. So too is Steve Tyrell’s This Time of Year, which unfortunately is not available from amazon as a download or the Russians. I believe iTunes has it though.

Hopefully that should be enough tunage to help feed your Christmas musical fix, if not, I have more…don’t get me started.

While driving to the store the other day, a thought occurred to me. Given that Catholicism is really into the Virgin Mary (bit of an understatement, I know), why aren’t there more Christmas songs about her, for her, to her?

I know Ave Maria is popular during this time of year, but that’s about the only song I can think of. Are there others I don’t know about?

I’m not saying we need more, please, don’t misunderstand me, just a simple observation.

I mean, aside from Mary in the nativity scene there’s not even a lot of Christmas chotchkies with her depiction, no Santa and Mary, nothing. I’m thinking that Mary Christmas chotchkies could be the next form of Indulgences that the Catholic Church could get behind. See what I did there, Mary Christmas instead of Merry Christmas? This could even be the gold mine the church needs to pay off the abuse lawsuits. Just a thought.

It is official, the Christmas tree is up, along with all our other decorations. We were not planning on decorating yesterday, it just kind of happened. We usually wait until the weekend after Thanksgiving to pull out the decorations, but something got into us and we went for it. So the garland is up, the tree is lit and the furniture is moved. It always seem like a challenge each year to figure out how we moved and arranged the furniture the year before. I think we’ve finally hit on a configuration we like.

The whole thing started when I said I wanted to go down and check out the Christmas tree at Fashion Island in Newport. We knew that would just make us sad if we didn’t have our tree up already, so Fashion Island got moved to this coming weekend and our tree went up yesterday along side our traditional media fare of Home Alone and The Santa Clause. I have to say, every year I look forward to that little Kevin McCallister foiling Marv and Harry’s plans to burglarize his house. He’s so smart for an eight-year-old.