Last year Charlie Cochrane treated us to her favourite Christmas music during Advent, on WordPress, Dreamwidth and Facebook. I enjoyed the posts so much I wanted to do something similar. I’m intending to post every day in December with my favourite ‘winter’ music. I loved some of the carols Charlie posted but I’m trying not to have the same list though there might be an overlap here and there.

I start feeling festive after my husband’s birthday at the end of November. Then there’s the run-up to my daughter’s birthday which takes place at the Solstice. I find the Solstice a magical time for that reason as well as the significance of the shortest day etc. I celebrate Christmas as a kind of family/solstice/saturnalia type of festival then it’s a countdown to New Year. Coming from about as far north in England as you can get (the Northumbrian side of the Scottish border) I tend to take New Year quite seriously!

As I developed my list I became aware that it was extremely Eurocentric – there’s one Australian song, and a few American ones but that’s about it. I think, for me personally, the solstice is a time for looking at our forests and wild places, so while I normally like to be more inclusive, in this case I’m a native of the north. I’d love to see the choices of someone from another part of the world or even another part of UK.

Not all my choices are by any means religious though there are one or two carols. I hope there’ll be something for everybody to enjoy. I’ll collect the full list in a pdf on my website at some point so you can refer to it if you want any links again.

I usually listen on Spotify (apart from gazing at The 2 Cellos) but I’ve used YouTube links assuming most people can access that wherever they live. I’ve used illustrations for each post either from my own photographs or from icons by LJ/DW icon makers. Today’s picture is by roxicons.

Now taking a deep breath for tomorrow and remembering to post every day…