'Tis the Season

I get a little obsessed with Christmas songs at this time of year. Partly for my daughter's sake but mostly for my own, I load up my iPod with that stuff so that I can play it in the car.

I mean "Christmas songs" in a broad sense. But I do have a slight obsession with "The Christmas Song" itself, informally known as "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire". I guess the guys who wrote it, Mel ("The Golden Fog") Tormé and Bob Wells, were pretty lucky that that title wasn't already taken. They wrote the song in 1944 or 1945, depending which Wikipedia article you believe. Tormé said that they wrote the song while just hanging out one summer day: they began spouting wintry phrases as a way of taking their minds off the heat, and it somehow turned into a song. A year ago I got a little more obsessed than usual with that song, and now I have 13 versions of it in my laptop. Most of them are lousy, so I have only put three of them in the iPod right now, but probably before the season is over I will go on a binge and listen to all 13 of them one day on the way to work. My three favorites are:

(1) Ella Fitzgerald's. Like the rest of the album "Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas", this wears well. I could listen to it every day for a month.

(2) The instrumental version by Vince Guaraldi, on the soundtrack of the Charlie Brown Christmas special.

(3) Aaron Neville's. Not quite as durable as Ella's, and not for everyone, but I could listen to it every two days for a month.

The ones that I don't like so much include one by Stevie Wonder that's uninspired and, I don't know, lame. There's also one by Dave Brubeck that's part of a whole album that's just no fun. And, come to think of it, the definitive Nat King Cole version just doesn't do it for me any more.