Sounds of the Season

Only 10 more shopping days until Christmas. Yes, really. Christmas has kind of come out of no where this year. Before you know it we'll be saying goodbye to another holiday season.
I've shot my fair share of holiday happenings this year, including Santa meet and greets (above and right) and Christmas parades (below, from earlier this month). It seems like it should be easy to get great photos out of these type of events, but I felt like I always came away with very average photos. Maybe I'm just not in the holiday spirit.
To change that, I'm adding some Christmas music to my play list. But not the typical "Jingle Bells" and "Deck the Halls" kind of stuff. While Christmas music can be fun, most of it is a bit cheesy. So today I give you some Christmas music Sufjan Stevens style. These are from his recently released, 5-disc boxed set called "Songs for Christmas". Most of the traditional Christmas songs are pretty straight forward. It's his original Christmas songs, however, that really stand out. They have all the greatness of a typical Sufjan song, but just happen to be about Christmas. Here's a sampling:

Star of Wonder.mp3
Only At Christmas Time.mp3
That Was The Worst Christmas Ever!.mp3

and one of my favorite traditional Christmas songs:

O Come O Come Emmanuel.mp3