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Top 11 Best Christmas Songs

The best Christmas songs have stood the test of time and still remain favorites. Enjoy the top 11 holiday favorites right here!

The Five Best Modern Christmas Songs

The Best Holiday Songs of the 20th Century!

Start your Christmas music list with five fantastic songs written in the 20th Century. These are not Christmas carols but celebrations of the holiday season, songs loved and recorded by wonderful artists for decades. Just looking at this list will likely get at least one of these songs in your head and all four of them can get your Christmas spirit flowing.

The five best modern Christmas songs are as follows:

White Christmas (Irving Berlin): First made famous in 1942, loved and recorded ever since.
Feliz Navidad (Jose Feliciano): This 1970 song has turned into one of the most-loved (and cheeriest) Chrismas songs ever.
The Christmas Song (Mel Torme and Bob Wells): Co-written in 1946 by The Velvet Frog and made wildy famous by the gorgeous voice of Nat King Cole.
Mele Kalikimaka (Robert Anderson): Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters made this one a major hit in 1950 and people have been wishing each other a Merry Christmas in Hawaiian ever since.
Christmas in Killarney (John Redmond, Frank Weldon, and James Cavanaugh): This celebration of neighborly, rural Christmas was first made famous by Bing Crosby in 1951.

The Top 5 Traditional Christmas Carols

Five Reminders of the Reason for the Season

Christmas may be a wonderful time to bask in the love of your family and friends but for many the point is to celebrate the birth of Christ and Christianity in general. That's why they call it Christmas, after all. You can find literally hundreds of traditional religious hymns and carols written over the centruries. As these are, indeed, traditional carols I haven't included writers or composers for them, just a reason I put them in the top five.

So without furhter frippery, the top five traiditional Christmas carols are as follows:

Angels We Have Heard on High: There aren't a lot of songs people still sing in Latin. This soaring hymn gives you a reason to do just that. If you aren't familiar with the dead language, you pronounce excelsis as "egg-shell-sees". The phrase gloria in excelsis deo means "glory to God in the highest".
Joy to the World: What song could be more appropriate to the Christmas season than one that celebrates the birth of Christ with such joy? It's just the holiday cheer you need for your tradtional carolling.
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing: Keeping the celebratory theme going, what's better than singing about angels announcing joyous news?
Oh, Come All Ye Faithful (Adeste Fidelis): Speaking of Latin and joy, this traditional carol still shares plenty of both with choirs and carolers to this day.
Away in a Manger: This may be the best-known Christmas carol of all time. It's certainly one of the very first a child learns in church.

Bonus: The Best Winter Love Song

Celebrate the Warmth of Love this Holiday Season

While not technically a Christmas song, I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm does celebrate the warmth of the holiday season. Irving Berlin wrote this one, too, and it debuted far back in 1937. Over the last 80-plus years it has been a favorite for defying the cold of winter by remembering a loved one. With Baby, It's Cold Outside it makes a wonderful complement to this list of the best holiday songs: a reminder that the Christmas is all about love.