Ten Non-Traditional Holiday Songs To Keep You Sane

By Chrissy Wilmes Fri., Dec. 17 2010 at 9:00 AM

Categories: Holiday Jams 2010, List-O-Rama

We're all force-fed holiday cheer from Halloween through New Year's, and even if you really, really love Christmas music, hearing the same old standards and modern classics over and over again can begin to fill you with exactly the opposite of holiday cheer. To avoid the monotony of those soft-rockin' jingle-bellin' classics, we present ten non-traditional holiday songs that are actually pretty good.

Bishop Allen, "You'll Never Find My Christmas"
This track was released on The Christmas Gig, a fourteen-song album produced by Target and available for free download here. The whole album is worth a listen, but "You'll Never Find My Christmas" is by far the most fun.

...it even inspired a cute Target commercial.

Grandaddy, "Alan Parsons in a Winter Wonderland"
Grandaddy's adorably un-Christmasy-yet-traditional Christmas song was originally released as a promotional single and later appeared on It's a Cool Cool Christmas in 2000. The song was re-written to concern itself heavily with Mr. Parsons. For example:

"In the meadow we can build a snowman
and pretend that he is Alan Parsons
He'll say 'Have you listened to my new band?'
and we'll say 'No, but we really like that one song
It goes, 'Time keeps flowing like a river''"

Listen to it here.