December daily: Christmas music

wychwood prompts: What is your very favourite Christmas music? What makes good Christmas music for you? Which one CD etc would you recommend?

For those of you who just met me, I have 1,049 Christmas songs, including eleven distinct melodies of "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night." It's fair to say that I really love Christmas music.

As far as what makes for good Christmas music -- well. I like acoustic instruments. If there's a vocal ensemble, I like it to be small, as opposed to something like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir where you can't pick out a single voice. I'm very partial to 6/8 time. When it comes to religious music, I quite like the weird and unorthodox, which is why I also have three distinct melodies of "Down In Yon Forest."

The hardest element to define is: If you'll think of a continuum more or less between quality and authenticity, there's a sweet spot in the middle but more on the authentic side. In other words, I've been known to reject a recording because it was too off-key, but I'm much more likely to reject a recording because it's "too slick" or "overproduced" or some other vague thing that means too far away from simple enjoyment of the music. Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band are right on that sweet spot for me, and so are the Christmas Revels.

( Recommendations and download links inside )