COLLECTING CHRISTMAS!

You’re finally in the Christmas mood. Perhaps you want to trim the tree or wrap presents or indulge in cookies and eggnog. You want the full throwback experience, but you don’t have any Christmas music to spin on your turntable, and you don’t want to hear the same old stuff from the local holiday-hits station. What now?

One of the best parts of collecting Christmas music is that you can obtain a good collection for not a lot of money. Except for music that is collectible for other reasons — for example, doo-wop, punk/alternative, audiophile reissues, 1990s vinyl — most Christmas albums are common and cheap. Many are likely to lurk in the bargain bins at thrift shops and used record stores. But don’t let that deter you! If it’s that old-time feeling you want, the $1-or-less stuff is exactly what you want. Because many of the albums were played only one month a year, even the cheap stuff often is in great shape. Actually, because the albums weren’t always stored with care, a mint-minus cover might be harder to find than a mint-minus record.

For this survey, the focus will be on vinyl albums. Collecting Christmas music on 45 is different; in recent years, some 45s, especially those that still get played on the radio, have become expensive. And CDs are yet another discussion.

In general, Christmas albums fall into two basic categories: various artists collections and single artist records.

VARIOUS ARTISTS ALBUMS

When it comes to the authentic vintage Christmas experience, nothing beats an album with favorite holiday songs performed by numerous different singers. The versions might not be the most famous, but they’ll still be good. With one exception, we’ll focus on those collections put out by the record labels’ special-markets divisions.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the most common way to get such an album wasn’t by going to a record store, but to places that rarely offered music the rest of the year — tire stores, hardware stores, banks and the like. These albums were designed as impulse buys, often kept by the cash registers. This is far from a complete list, but below are four of the most famous series.

Goodyear

Though a few predated it, the golden age of the Christmas premium album starts in 1961, with . Offered at Goodyear tire dealers, it was