December is perfect for classical music, and the DirecTV channel “Light Classical” really fits the shortening days quite nicely. Always good for background music in the fall, they’ve started mixing in some Christmas music that is, well, Christmas music. Classical takes on popular songs and carols, plus classical baroque pieces that sound like any other classical music except it has a Christmas title in it. You even hear some sorta classical stuff from the Mannheim Steamroller collection, which is pretty nice.

DirecTV’s “Holidays and Happenings” channel is a whole ‘nutha beast entirely. Unbelievable. It features every popular Christmas song you can imagine – and I’m talking about stuff from back in the ’40s to today. You can listen to that channel all afternoon and not only not hear the same song twice, but not hear the same artist twice. They have to have assembled the largest Christmas song catalog ever. So far, I really liked Fats Domino’s versions of “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Silent Night” are awesome – I think I gotta pick his Christmas album up. Unfortunately, they haven’t played any Christmas surf music, which is too bad – The Ventures have a pretty good Christmas CD. And they could visit Bert Kaempfert’s Christmas album a little more often, as I’ve written before, that’s a classic!