Welcome back to the Virtual Advent Tour! Today is the end of our first week, so I hope the season has been going well for you so far.

We are big music listeners in my family, and our tastes are broad, particularly at the holidays. My dad’s Christmas music collection numbers in the hundreds, and mine is catching up, having overflowed the milk crate I keep it in a few years back. In fact, while in New York last month, I bought a new Christmas cd based on nothing more than the fact that it was one.

As kids, we listened to vinyl and the mix tapes Dad made, and our favorites included his holiday recordings, which later moved to cd as the media changed.

For many years now, I’ve also made an annual Christmas cd. In fact, I wrote about my process for one of my very first Virtual Advent Tours, and I have shared songs off my cds on occasion over the years.

This year, I’ve been auditioning music intermittently since mid-November, but listened to quite a few tunes while working late earlier this week. While I may share some of the new songs I’m considering later in the tour, today I thought I’d give you a trio of the songs that made it onto last year’s cd.

First up we have The Sugarpills performing “Christmas Is the Time to Say I Love You,” originally written and recorded by Billy Squier. Their pared down version of the song gives it an earnestness I like:

Second, we have “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” performed by Miley Cyrus and Mark Ronson and featuring Sean Ono Lennon on the song his parents wrote:

Finally, we have Leilani and the Distractions with their klezmer adaptation of Johnny Marks’ “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” I’m a sucker for reworkings and mashups of well-known songs, so my mixes often include at least one:

Today, we’ll be cleaning our apartment in preparation for our tree-trimming party on Sunday, and I’m looking forward to finally getting a chance to listen to Dad’s 2019 Christmas mix while I do it. I hope your Saturday also includes some musical highlights, however you prefer them.

I’ll see you back here tomorrow. Oh, and if you’d like to join in on the fun of the Virtual Advent Tour, leave me a comment and we can set you up with a date. We still have openings throughout the rest of Advent.