It's hard to even hear Christmas music any more. Obviously I don't mean literally: the minute that Halloween's over, carols get cast about like so much aural tinsel. But in the places where this is so, many of us have long since lost the awareness of what this music actually sounds like.
Michael Praetorius – Es ist ein Ros entsprungen (Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming; 1609)
It's fundamentally weird. Not that people who celebrate Christmas play Christmas music, but how rarely we notice how incongruous this Christmas music is. Winter Wonderland and O Holy Night don't sound like what's wafting through shopping malls during the rest of the year. Many of these are hymns or traditionals. Others are literally show tunes, or schmaltz from an era before Newfoundland became a part of Canada.
Morten Lauridsen – O Magnum Mysterium (1994)
Maybe this is why I have such a soft spot for seasonal music that wouldn't get mainstream play in any other context. Mostly this means choral music: Handel's Messiah, sure, but also American composer Morten Lauridsen's ghostly O Magnum Mysterium, and Michael Praetorius's 400-year-old arrangement of the German carol Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming.
Mannheim Steamroller – Deck The Halls (1984)
However, it also means Mannheim Steamroller's boundless and depraved Deck The Halls. It's a Yuletide standard in my partner's family; I admit, upon first exposure I believed it might be the worst music in the world. But perhaps the Steamroller's more like the English tradition of a ripe blue cheese beside the festive fireplace. Their Deck The Halls may bring to mind Kraftwerk, the intro music from an Olympics telecast, or, as my mother-in-law would (will) contend, three kings astride their camels. I like it because it feels like a dispatch from a universe where the robots have taken over, and Christmas is software, and the chestnuts have learned to roast themselves.
Laura Spink and Abigail Lapell – Ner Li (2016)
Like many Jewish families, mine never put on any Hanukkah music. On this beautiful recording by Toronto singers Laura Spink and Abigail Lapell, you can feel the darkness of the room and the flicker of the lights, their harmonies as fragile as those glimmering flames. After listening to it, my advice is not to listen to anything else: In this noisy season, sit and let some silence be.
Sean Michaels received the 2014 Scotiabank Giller Prize for his novel Us Conductors. He is the editor of the music blog Said the Gramophone