Slick Ice in the Forecast: A Digital Christmas Collection for December ‘24

Or, a Very Fretless Christmas...

This December you’ll find Weather Channel music, lush FM synth tones in a fretless winter wonderland, and sounds from the snowy Windham Hills. Probably some music your aunt from California had on CD.

It’s a departure from my other holiday mixes like my Country Christmas playlist, or last year’s Reggae playlist where I attempted to capture great Christmas tunes more or less within the genre boundaries, or my Christmas Special where I combined a little of lots of kinds of music made up of the Christmas songs I never tire of.

This one is a little different. I can’t really stand by each one of these songs as beautiful perfect pieces of music, but they are evocative of the sort of slick & smooth holiday music I would hear growing up. Usually in commercialized and unhip places: malls, tv commercials, and as the blue screen of the local Weather Channel forecast rolled on. The only thing cool about this music is the icy synthesized tones.

Some people in the 80s and 90s were nostalgic about the 60s and 70s, so it seems appropriate to sift through the tackier remnants of the cultural detritus of the early compact disc era and see what there is to see.

Maybe this playlist will be divisive or unpopular. I certainly understand plenty of reasons why people might not be interested, but I encourage listeners to approach this music with fresh ears, and a sense of adventure, and embrace this glassy smooth era of Christmas music. Enjoy!