Five of my favorite Christmas songs

I'm not doing much for Christmas this year (by choice) but I thought I'd share some Christmas music. You might be tired of Christmas music by now, but these mostly aren't songs that are likely to show up on department-store muzak, and they're worth knowing about. Kind of a mix of funny and poignant, and one that's both.

First, one new classic, Joni Mitchell's "River" in the Indigo Girls cover version.

I love holiday breakup songs, and Antje Duvekot's "Merry Christmas, Thanks for the Roses" is one of my favorites. There used to be an official video but I can't find it, so here she is live with Winterbloom.

Singing harmony on the far left in the video above is Meg Hutchinson, who (despite not being from here) wrote what is hands-down my favorite song about Minnesota, and in contention for my favorite overall, "Let's Go." It's only tangentially a Christmas song, but I'm going to include it here because I will find any excuse.

After that I need a palate cleanser, so here's something purely sardonic, the Elves Song from Futurama's second X-Mas episode, which have my vote for best science fiction Christmases unless Ces Marciuliano's jokes about the Star Wars Holiday Special count.

And then at the end, something more directly Christmasy if not religious. Tim Minchin went really big really fast as a comedy act, and then kind of wandered off and started writing musicals; this song was a big deal here for a while but I'm not sure it really is anymore. But the way he takes his wholly secular perspective and turns it into a song about the value of family holidays is extremely well done and deserves to have lasting impact.