(via Shutterstock)
While Christmas albums from a wide variety of artists are hardly out of style, what is most remarkable in this year of our festive lord 2025 is how many Christmas singles have made their way out into an tinsel-draped, eggnog-addled world.
Maybe there were always a lot of them, and this reviewer somehow missed a great many of them, but thanks to some active Bluesky accounts, which daily list a huge number of songs hitting streaming platforms, it’s clear that a lot of people love Christmas and are more than happy to sing about if you will only listen.
And, yes, I am more than prepared to listen, and listen often, to all kinds of songs from all manner of artists including those would not normally darken my playlists such as country and western singers or jazz artists.
It’s great to sample and enjoy the diversity of Christmas songs out there this year, and while these ten are a mere drop in the festive music ocean, they do give you some idea of why Christmas songs are so essential to building a warm and lovely soundtrack to the season …
“O Little Town of Bethlehem” by Sara Evans
American country music singer-songwriter Sara Evans has opted to deliver a reasonably straightforward take on Christmas classic, “O Little Town of Bethlehem” which is based on an 1868 text by American Episcopal clergyman and author Phillips Brooks. Set to different music depending on which side of the Atlantic you’re on – in the U.S./Canada it’s St. Louis by Lewis Redner (who worked closely with Brooks) and in the UK/Ireland to “Forest Green” (collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams), the much-loved carol really doesn’t need to much interpretation and Evans doesn’t give it one, preferring to let her beautifully emotive vocals and a sparsely gorgeous guitar-driven delivery create a warmly festive tone that does real justice to the song.
“Happy Holidays” by Anaïs Reno
(courtesy Apple Music)
Hailing from New York, much-decorated jazz singer and composer Anaïs Reno is known for her renditions from the Great American Songbook. With “Happy Holidays”, Reno gifts us with a jaunty, playfully alive take on Irving Berlin’s 1942 classic “Happy Holiday” which was first introduced in the film Holiday Inn by Bing Crosby and Marjorie Reynolds (dubbed by Martha Mears). While a lot of artists have covered the track, and for good reason since it FEELS like a Christmas song (however intangible that might feel), Reno’s take feels that extra bit more festive than most.
“Winter Wonderland” by Lady A
(courtesy Apple Music)
This is another track that makes its way onto a lot of people’s Christmas albums – some 200 in fact including Perry Como, the Andrews Sisters, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Amy Grant and Laufey – and deservedly so because it is part of the established soundtrack to the season, even in places where Christmas takes place in summer and snow, where it does fall in winter, is a distant memory. Lady A (a renamed Lady Antebellum) deliver a chilled and relaxed country-inflected take on the 1934 song by Felix Bernard and lyricist Richard Bernhard Smith with feels warmly inclusive and just the sort of vibe you want for some fires singing over the season.
“White Christmas” by Thelma & James
(courtesy YouTube)
Husband-and-wife duo Thelma & James, fresh from a decade of successful solo projects, have collaborated for a breathlessly beautiful take on another Irving Berlin classic, “White Christmas” which also features in the 1942 film Holiday Inn. They manage to deliver on the nostalgia-laden reminiscing of the song, which includes more a little melancholy about not being near the snow one Christmas – one version of the song’s origin story say that Berlin wrote it in sunny California in 1940 – while giving the song a beautiful emotional resonance, courtesy of just-so guitar work and delicately evocative harmonies.
“Christmastime is Here” by Mia McIntosh
(courtesy Genius)
An artist on the rise, Mia McIntosh is an 18-year-old singer-songwriter, studying at Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music with a voice that Indiepulse Music Magazine declares to be “equal parts classic and contemporary”. She has delivered a version of the song “Christmastime is Here”, perhaps best known as a musical standout in Christmas animated classic, A Charlie Brown Christmas, for which it was written in 1965 by Vince Guaraldi and Lee Mendelson. There’s a sparse affecting beauty to the song which McIntosh captures perfectly with stripped piano work and vocals that are beautiful as well being full of emotional meaning.
“Song For a Winter’s Night” by Ingrid Michaelson
(courtesy Spotify)
I have long loved Ingrid Michaelson who possesses an impressive ability to move across a variety of song styles with an ear for a catchy tune and a voice to do them justice. The American singer-songwriter has released a number of Christmas singles in her time, and while she is known for songs like “The Way I am” (2006) and “Girls Chase Boys” (2014), she is also equally adept at turning her talents to more festive tunes such as “Song For a Winter’s Night”, a cover of the 1967 classic song by Gordon Lightfoot which, as Secret Road perfectly observes “captures the warmth and heart of the season, and that familiar longing to be with those you hold dear”.
“Blue Christmas” by Rosie Darling
(courtesy SoundCloud)
Christmas is supposed to be song of perfect love and joy but sometimes life gets rather cruelly in the way and you can’t be with the ones you love at a time of the year that all but mandates it. “Blue Christmas”, written by Billy Hayes and Jay W. Johnson, and most notably sung by Elvis Presley – though it was first performed in 1948 by Doye O’Dell – distills that deep sadness at being away from the one you love more than any other at Christmas and its tone and style and meaning have all been captured flawlessly by Boston-born, Los Angeles-based singer Rosie Darling who loves her music to “… feel like a risk–and more vulnerable”, something that is very much to the fore in her take on this classic Christmas song.
“Merry Christmas Darling” by Stella Cole
(courtesy Shore Fire Media)
Another Christmas classic but this one is a little more recent, penned by Richard Carpenter and Frank Pooler and released in November 1970 with “Mr Guder” as the B-side. While the song was re-recorded for the 1978 release by the Carpenters, Christmas Portrait, it’s the 1970 version that was used for all single releases. Stella Cole, an American singer known, says Wikipedia, “for her interpretations of jazz standards and songs from the Great American Songbook”, has taken this wistfully beautiful song which “reflects the joy and happiness of the holiday, yet with an underlying sadness: it isn’t Christmas if that special someone isn’t there” and gives it a gorgeously nuanced and lushly original new sheen that captures your heart.
“Christmas All year Long” by Tasha Layton
(courtesy Spotify)
It’s a common lament by many people that the joy and goodwill of the Christmas season can’t last beyond December itself, and for good reason – whatever your feelings about the season, and the reality on the ground, Christmas does feel a little more magically possible that the rest of the year. American contemporary Christian music singer, songwriter, and author Tasha Layton serves up a deliciously retro classic take on this sentiment with big band bonhomie and the kind of sentiments that will resonate with a lot of people.
“This Time of Year” by Mona Rue
(courtesy YouTube)
Mona Rue is the musically artistic nom de plume of front-woman singer/songwriter/producer of BELLSAINT, Caroline Brooks who cites ABBA, Lady Gaga and Johnny Cash as some of her influences. She has a warm and rich voice that carries so much emotion and meaning and she seems to have poured every last drop of it into her original composition “This Time of Year” which features hauntingly evocative vocals and lyrics which express how much we all need to be with those we love at Christmas. It’s a joy and one of the beautiful releases this year.
EUROVISION SINGS CHRISTMAS 2025
The Eurovision Song Contest isn’t just for May and as proof positive, here are just a few songs by Eurovision alumni. You can find the rest at wiwiblogg’s “Eurovision Christmas: New festive songs from Lucio Corsi, Go-Jo, Elena and more” …
“Holy Night” by Toby Gad feat. Sam Ryder (2022 UK entrant)
“Вогники” by Tina Karol (2026 entrant for Ukraine)
“Merry Christmas from Australia” by Go-Jo (2025 Australia entrant) & American artist salem ilese