Brett’s Top 3 Sounds of the Season

It’s no surprise that I’m Magic’s official Christmas elf – I think you could have guessed that when I begged Debbie Mazella to let me be the person to “flip the switch” for when Magic became Jersey’s Christmas Station!

So, as a self-proclaimed Christmas fanatic, it’s hard to narrow down my top 3 Christmas songs – just because I really do love them all! But, if I had to choose, it would go down like this:

• “Believe” by Josh Groban

  “When it seems the Magic’s slipped away, we find it all again on Christmas Day.” This song sums up the holiday season for me and what makes it so special – it makes you feel young again and recall fantastic memories of growing up, running downstairs and being greeted with a ton of presents under the tree from Santa! If you haven’t taken the time to listen to the lyrics, the next time we play it on Magic, crank it up and give it a listen! Besides, after hearing it time and time again throughout The Polar Express (my favorite Christmas movie hands down), how can you not fall in love with it? You can almost picture the kids’ awe when they reach the North Pole and meet Santa Claus!

• “Christmas Time Is Here” by the Vince Guaraldi Trio

  Every Christmas morning growing up, my parents would put on the soundtrack from A Charlie Brown Christmas as we walked through the house, grabbed the gifts from the stockings in each hallway, placed them under the tree and opened them together. Whenever I hear this song, it takes me right back to those Christmases as a kid. We still continue that tradition to this very day and listen to the whole album from beginning to end. I was so excited to catch the special on TV the other night, too! And besides, who doesn’t need a reminder of the “true meaning of Christmas” like Charlie Brown gets each year?

• “Christmas in Dixie” by Alabama

  This might come out of left field for a lot of people – especially when they know my typical Christmas tastes! But my parents had this 2 CD Christmas music collection that we would always play around the holidays, and this song was on there. When I was younger, we would always go to Charlotte, NC to visit my aunt for Thanksgiving. I’d always love seeing the decorations and heading to the annual tree lighting that they’d host at a local mall late Thanksgiving night. I’d be bound to hear this song on the radio at least once or twice while visiting, and it was always fun to hear the lyric that called out Charlotte in the song!