I love Christmas music. You can say I'm sappy; I don't care.

Some of our prettiest songs are Christmas carols. Don't you think "Silent Night," "O Holy Night" and "Ave Maria" would make lovely lullabies with different words?

This morning I made sure to tune in to the Risky Biscuit Hayseed Hoot (8-10 a.m., KTHX, 100.1 FM) because I knew it was about time for Dondo Darue to play John McCutcheon's "Christmas in the Trenches." Some would call it a tear jerker; I call it powerful. My timing was right; he played the song today. It tells the story about German and English soldiers crossing a battlefield in France one Christmas Eve during World War I to exchange treats and Christmas greetings.

The conclusion seems truer and sadder today than ever:


Hey, I enjoy the "novelty" Christmas songs, too. I love "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer." I have it on a cassette somewhere, and I hope I find it before Christmas because it has another song I like: "Here's to the Lonely." It's another Christmas song, but it's surprisingly pretty rather than funny.

Another Christmas song I love is the one Horatio Sanz would perform with assorted other cast members (and sometimes guests) on Saturday Night Live. I don't know whether it's the expressions on their faces or the catchy rhythm that delights me. I lucked out and caught it the other night on the SNL Christmas special. (NBC makes it hard to find on line, but I was able to find an audio version of it on You Tube just now.)

Of course I like Robert Earl Keen's "Merry Christmas from the Family." It feels so good to both recognize the family members and feel a little better than them at the same time.

May I recommend a couple of my favorite Christmas CDs? I have to warn you that I am drawn to peaceful, pretty, background music so if that puts you to sleep you won't like these:

• Guitar Winterlude: Instrumentals for a Contemplative Christmas, written, arranged and produced by Mark Baldwin. This is an oldie; I first bought it as a cassette and probably from a discount bin. I liked it and used it so much I searched out a CD version. Very relaxing.
  
• American Indian Christmas by Jana. Jana is an American Indian singer with a beautiful voice. The CD has ten Christmas carols, each sung in a different American Indian language. I can and do play it over and over.
  

Some Christmas music is awful, and very few new pop Christmas songs seem to become favorites. For some reason, the radio station that plays all Christmas music this time of year seems to play the worst songs over and over. The one I hate the most is "The Christmas Shoes." It's an endless song about a little boy, covered in dirt, trying to buy a pair of shoes with pennies on Christmas Eve because his mother has been sick and he wants her to look beautiful if she "meets Jesus tonight." I'm sorry, it doesn't even make sense to  me (talk about holes in the plot) and it's still depressing.

Some Christmas songs are too sappy even for me.