Free Holiday Music

I'm one of those people who love holiday music, and look forward to it all year. I started playing carols and the like on on the afternoon of Thanksgiving Day. I tend to favor the old and traditional, even the very old, over the modern, and can't bear things like "I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus."

There's a fair amount of free holiday music available right now. First, Amazon is, once again, offering a song a day until Christmas for free download. You can download the previous songs as well. And Amazon is temporarily offering a collection of seven free holiday songs here. The free songs include:

"It Came Upon A Midnight Clear" Frank Sinatra
"Good King Wenceslas" Paul Weston & His Orchestra
"Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" The Robert Shaw Chorale with Al Chernet
"Deck the Halls Mario" Lanza Henri René and His Orchestra
"O Come, All Ye Faithful" (Digitally Mastered May 1990) Norman Luboff Choir
"Panis Angelicus" Robert Goulet
"Silent Night, Holy Night" Mahalia Jackson

Apple via iTunes is offering a "holiday sampler" of twenty songs, from familiar and newer performers, and including classic and contemporary holiday songs. You can download them for free (and without DRM, though they are AAC files) until December 17, 2009 here. You will need to have iTunes to download them, though any application that can handle AAC files can play them.

If you're fine with streaming free music, I note that both AOL radio and Yahoo offer a variety of free streaming holiday stations. There's Hanukah music, music for Scrooge and Grouch adherents, Country Western, Classic tunes, etc. You'll find the AOL holiday stations here. Yahoo's holiday stations are here.