Music for Advent and Christmas

You may like to rock around the Christmas tree and sing about that reindeer’s glowing nose, but popular Christmas music played on the radio often times forgets to mention the real reason for season, Jesus Christ. To help you add some true Christian sentiment to your festivities, Aquinas and More offers a selection of Advent and Christmas music that truly emphasize the incarnation and birth of our Savior.

Advent Music

While many radio stations and stores start playing Christmas songs at Thanksgiving or even before, the season that is really taking place up until the night of December 24th is Advent. With that in mind, some of the Aquinas and More holiday music CDs feature not only Christmas, but also Advent music. Advent songs include lyrics that refer to waiting for Christ – an example of a most popular Advent song is ‘O Come O Come Emmanuel.’ A Christmas of Peace, Favorite Songs of Advent and Christmas, and Be Merry are music albums that have tunes for both Christmas and Advent.

Christmas Music

In secular as well as religious music, there seem to be many more songs for Christmas than Advent.This is only natural as Christmas is a season of celebration of the birth of Christ.

Still, in turning on the radio, the same tunes seem to be played over and over. You can remedy that by adding some beautiful, traditional Christmas chant to listen to at work, at home, at Christmas get-togethers or as you pray during the Christmas season. CDs that are available include Christmas Chant by Benedictine Monks, Chants of Christmas, and Gregorian Chant, Christmas Chants, which includes chant recorded at several Abbeys and even the Paris Gregorian Choir. Also available is Chant and Spirituality of Christmas which includes not only Christmas chants, but also narration on the Christmas texts.

And now, newly available is the Christmas chant CD Christmas at St. Michael’s Abbey. This wonderful recording includes the liturgical chants for all three Christmas masses – midnight, Mass at dawn, and Mass during the day. St. Michael's Abbey is a community of Norbertine Canons Regular in Orange County, California. Its first members were Hungarian priests who escaped to the United States to leave communism and settled in California in 1957. The community was raised to the status of an abbey in 1984 because of its growth. St. Michael's Abbey now numbers nearly 70 members.

If you are interested in some other unique options for Christmas tunes, check out Medieval Christmas or Christmas Music from Medieval Hungary. Christmas celebrations in medieval Europe were much different than today’s – including, of course, the choice in festive music. Other CDs that will provide a little more variety than what you hear on the radio or with the Muzak at the mall are A Latin American Baroque Christmas and the German Christmas music album Stille Nacht.

Aquinas and More also has plenty of modern Christmas music options, such as Light Eternal by the ever-popular John Michael Talbot and the moving and beautiful