Two Year Anniversary!

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I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it’s our two-year anniversary! I know, I’m just as shocked as you!

Two Year Anniversary!
Two Year Anniversary!

What started as a little experiment two years and twenty-four (admittedly inconsistent) episodes ago has grown into an incredibly fulfilling project and the most fun I’ve had with a hobby since the years I spent dragging my wife around Oregon, writing about craft beer and homebrewing. But that’s a story for another time.

Much like that previous stint in amateur journalism, this podcast has given me the opportunity to meet and interact with some incredibly awesome Christmas Aficionados. Not to be confused with Joe, the Christmas Aficionado, whose show just celebrated its fourth anniversary. Congrats Joe!

I want to start off this anniversary post by thanking the Christmas podcast community.

Totally Rad Christmas
Totally Rad Christmas

First, there’s Gerry D of the Totally Rad Christmas podcast. Gerry not only invited me into the Christmas Podcast community but continues to let me come onto his show and talk for way too long about ’80s Christmas movie soundtracks and obscure cartoons no one remembers.

Gerry, without your kindness, this podcast would not exist. It would have been a single, fleeting YouTube video and then maybe a post or two on Medium…or Substack…or whatever the kids are using now.

And the same goes for the rest of the Christmas Podcast community. It has been the most welcoming, supportive group I’ve ever been a part of.

A few more quick shout-outs to all the folks that have come on the show…or have invited me onto their shows…or I’ve just had the opportunity to bump into or interact with.

That includes:

And if you’re thinking, “Man, that’s a lot of Christmas podcasts,” that’s just scratching the surface.

There’s also:

And those are just the shows that have released a new episode between the beginning of December and whenever I checked the list.

List you ask?

ChristmasPodcasts.com
ChristmasPodcasts.com

That’s the episode list over at christmaspodcasts.com where Sean, who also hosts the Christmas Podcasts Podcast does an amazing job keeping track of all the new episodes of all these incredible shows.

I can’t overstate how awesome this community is and how grateful I am to have been a part of it for the last two years.

So, now that we have that long introduction out of the way, what are we doing today for our anniversary?

I thought this would be a catch-up post.

A lot has happened over the last year that hasn’t made it into the podcast or the blog.

So today, we’re going to cover a few of those topics. A bit of a peek behind the digital curtain.

And we’re starting off with my Christmas Closet.

No, it’s not a new segment, it’s literally a closet.

Last summer, my wife and I started renovating our home office but had to put that project on hold when we discovered water damage in our downstairs bathroom, which I mentioned in the last post.

Now that we are on the other side of that impromptu project, and the bathroom-shaped hole in the floor is once again a functioning bathroom, we’re getting back to working on the office.

Part of our plans for the office include setting up a permanent podcasting space…under the stairs.

It’s actually way cooler than it sounds. Our office has a big closet that runs the entire length of our staircase, including the landing area at the top of the stairs. Plenty of room to install a desk and my recording equipment, but still small enough to not cost a fortune to soundproof.

And that’s pretty exciting. For the last two years, my podcasting has been, well, nomadic. The coffee table, the dining table, my mic stand hooked precariously through the steering wheel of my car during lunch.

As you can imagine, that comes with challenges.

For example, it took me three attempts to record the intro for the podcast episode. The first attempt was foiled by my dog repeatedly “thunking” his treat ball into the door. And attempt number two featured the vocal performance of a crow that posted up in the tree outside my window and seemed determined to caw every time I hit the record button.

In preparation for having a permanent recording space, I’ve also picked up some lights and camera gear. In the not-to-distant future, in addition to hearing me, you may also start seeing me in some videos.

That’s right Gerry, in a couple of months we’ll be closet recording buddies. Except your closet will still have 1000% more new-on-the-card Karate Kids action figures than mine.

The next thing I wanted to talk about is collecting music.

As someone who has a podcast dedicated to music, it would be a reasonable assumption that I have a large album collection.

And I do. Well, largish. But until last year, I hadn’t added to that collection since the beginning of 2010, over 16 years ago.

Swoon - Silversun Pickups
Swoon - Silversun Pickups

I actually remember the exact day. My wife took me CD shopping for my birthday, and I came home with David Guetta’s One Love and Swoon by the Silversun Pickups.

I’m someone who loves the whole experience of buying music. From flipping through albums, to making decisions based on the cover art, to the tactile moment you pop the disc into the player and listening for the first time.

But that time felt different. It felt like the rest of the world had moved on and there I was, performing some outdated, archaic ritual.

I’ll go over this in more detail in an upcoming History of the Christmas Album episode, but the short version is that CD sales had gone from a peak of over 900 million units sold in 2000 to well under 300 million by 2010.

People love to put the blame on Napster and other torrent services for killing music sales. The reality is that illegal music made far less of a dent in CD sales than the two technologies that immediately followed it. The first being Apple’s iTunes store, and with it the ability to buy any song for $.99. The second, as you’ve probably already guessed, early streaming services like Rhapsody and Pandora.

Those two things not only cratered physical music sales, but they completely changed how people listen to music. The album was quickly replaced with the playlist.

Instead of choosing to listen to a cohesive work of art, something you thought was worth owning, worth purchasing, or at the very least worth pirating, you just slam that skip button until you land on something tolerable. No investment, no intention.

Maybe this is just me being an old man yelling at clouds, but I hate it. I miss listening to albums, I miss the ritual, I miss the intention.

Fast forward to the beginning of 2025 and my wife gave me a turntable for my birthday.

It was one of the best gifts I’ve ever received. It was also incredibly generous. My wife absolutely hates clutter, so, giving me a present that also implicitly gave me the green light to start buying and collecting albums took an amazing amount of selflessness…possibly foolishness…I suppose we’ll find out.

So, I started my birthday in 2025 exactly where I ended my birthday in 2010, buying music.

And what have I been buying? Well, everything.

A few albums that have been getting some heavy rotation over the last year include Passover by the Black Angels. It’s a modern, grimy take on pych-rock from a talented group out of Texas. Also, the Black Pumas, both their self-titled release and their Chronicles of a Diamond album.

Departures and Arrivals - Curtis Harding
Departures and Arrivals - Curtis Harding

Every Curtis Harding album, especially last fall’s Departures and Arrivals: Adventures of Captain Curt. This was my favorite album of 2025. If you’re not familiar with Curtis, or the album, check out the tracks “There She Goes” or “Out In The Black”. Fantastic stuff.

I’ve also been enjoying Ray LaMontange’s Ouroboros. It’s a fairly stark departure from the rest of his works. It was produced by Jim Jame of My Morning Jacket and you can definitely hear the influence on tracks like “The Changing Man”.

Leon from Leon Bridges, a beautiful album, full of beautiful songs like “Laredo”. The same can be said for Black Velvet by the amazing Charles Bradley and backed by the Menehan Street Band.

And of course, the latest album by Alison Krauss and Union Station, Arcadia.

One thing I can say, every time one of these albums hits the needle, or the needle hits it I suppose, it hasn’t been lifted until the entire album has finished playing. Both sides.

I also picked up a new-to-me Onkyo SACD player from the late ’00s and have once again been adding to my CD, and now SACD collection.

And something I learned: Used CDs are cheap, like ridiculously cheap. I’m not sure I’d ever purchased a used CD until last year, but I couldn’t believe it.

A Very She & Him Christmas
A Very She & Him Christmas

Last week, I picked up a like-new copy of A Very She & Him Christmas, complete with the little red envelope and Christmas card insert and the 1991 reissue of The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album for $.99 each. That’s amazing.

There we go. We’ve finally mentioned something about Christmas music in this post.

Though it took us a while to get here, most of my vinyl and CD collecting has been Christmas music.

The first nine Christmas albums I purchased were the nine albums that contain the songs that make up the Disneyland Main Street USA Holiday Loop. Research material for a still-upcoming episode.

Those were:

Most of my favorite Christmas albums come from the late 1950’s to the early 1970’s. Alonso and I touched on it briefly on his Merry Mixtape episode.

During this period, you had all these great conductors, these amazing symphony orchestras, all releasing Christmas albums with remarkable, meticulous production quality. Lush, smooth and incredibly polished.

All the albums I just mentioned fall into that category, with the exception of the Rita Ford album, which is literally an album of antique music boxes playing Christmas songs, but we’ll dive into that on the upcoming Main Street USA episode.

One of the best things about collecting Christmas music, especially from this period, is that if you do enough digging, you’ll find some extremely pristine records for not much more than they would have originally sold for, over a half-century ago.

It kind of makes sense if we think about how Christmas records were used. People would play them a couple of times during the holidays, then put them away for the rest of the year. This often meant actually packing them away with the ornaments and decorations. They didn’t spend much time on the turntable and they weren’t constantly being handled like the Elvis and Beatles albums of that time.

With only two exceptions, I paid between $3 and $10 dollars for every Christmas album I just named, and each one was in excellent condition.

The David Rose Christmas Album
The David Rose Christmas Album

There are definitely outliers. Both Christmas Favorites by The Hollyridge Strings and The David Rose Christmas Album were north of $20, and both were a steal at that price. You don’t often see either for less than $50 in decent condition.

The Three Suns’ Ding Dong Dandy Christmas is another one that orbits in the $50-100 range, though they have a couple other Christmas albums that, while not quite as good, can be found under that $10 price point.

Just a Lonely Christmas - The Moonglows
Just a Lonely Christmas (credit: Discogs)

Then there’s what might be the most expensive Christmas vinyl, The Moon Glows 1953 Chance records single “Just a Lonely Christmas”. This 45 has “Hey Santa Claus” on the B-side, which appeared in the shopping mall scene at the beginning of Christmas Vacation. There isn’t any Discogs sales history for the original pressing, but the estimated market price, should one come up, is around $3,000.

Outliers aside, there’s a lot of amazing, inexpensive Christmas music out there.

Another example, I recently picked up a first pressing, mono copy of Merry Christmas From Lawrence Welk. Again, research for an upcoming episode. I paid just under $10 for it and it is in immaculate condition for a record that was stamped 70 years ago.

Here are a few of the Christmas music sellers that I’ve had a great experience with:

Invest In Vinyl Sleeves
Invest In Vinyl Sleeves

Invest in Vinyl also has stores on both Ebay and Discogs and they produce the inner and outer sleeves I use on all of my records.

And of course, check your local record shops and thrift stores. From my non-scientific observations, record stores seem to put out their Christmas stock around the beginning of November (though it never hurts to ask if they have more hiding in the back), while thrift stores seem to get an influx of donations right after the first of the year. Which…makes sense.

I picked up both Christmas with Conniff and Season’s Greetings from Perry Como, both in good shape, from one of my local record shops just before the holidays for $3 each.

Merry Christmas - Johnny Mathis
Merry Christmas - Johnny Mathis

And I’ve found several albums at the local thrift stores since the beginning of the year. Everything from super common artists like Johnny Mathis and Mario Lanza, to more obscure items like It’s Christmas by The Lexington Singers and Christmas in the Old World, a Philips compilation of traditional songs from different European countries.

I plan on making videos talking about some of these albums once the closet is online, but I also want to create a way for folks to be able to follow along with my Christmas music collecting.

Which brings me to my topic.

I’ve been neglecting this website for some time.

Each time I upload a new podcast episode, I rework the script into a corresponding blog post, like this one. Like everything else, this takes time and the website has been running a couple of posts behind the podcast for several months now.

But, as of today, today being the day this post goes live, everything is caught back up.

And, while I was updating the website, I also made a few tweaks and additions.

If you look up at the top, there is now an Albums category. Here you will find all of the Christmas albums in my collection.

It’s pretty basic right now, but as time allows, or as it ties in with future episodes and videos, I’ll be adding more information to the entries. Less like album reviews and more like a personal Wikipedia.

I was going to talk about how we’re making a similar switch away from video streaming services and reinvesting in DVDs and Blu-rays, but it’s a lot of the same points we just covered, so here are the fast highlights.

Netflix, gone. Amazon Prime, gone. Hulu and Disney+, not gone yet, but definitely on borrowed time.

Peanuts Deluxe Collection DVD
Peanuts Deluxe Collection DVD

Popping in my DVD copy of A Charlie Brown Christmas and not having to deal with an Apple TV subscription, or timing their free viewing weekend is so, so much easier. And buying the whole Peanuts holiday collection cost about the same as a month of a single streaming service.

Pro Tip: Barnes and Noble has an after-Christmas Christmas sale and it’s a great way to add to your own holiday music or movie library. They carry a surprising amount of Christmas titles, both in store and online. All of it is 30-40% off after the holidays and you get to stack your normal 10% discount if you’re a member.

I didn’t pick up any albums this time around, but I did grab DVD copies of It’s a Wonderful Life, White Christmas and the 1970 Scrooge musical with Albert Finney, along with Blu-ray copies of Meet Me in St. Louis and Holiday Inn, all for under $50.

I was also going to talk about buying a copy of The Sandlot after I got tired of it repeatedly disappearing it from Disney+ when I wanted to watch it. But, it was really just a ham-fisted set up to the final topic tonight. My Grandmother.

My grandmother lived with us my entire childhood, from the time I was born until I moved out after high school. She wasn’t a particular fan of television or movies; she preferred to read. Books, magazines, newspapers, she was always reading.

That said, there were a few things she would watch. The Thanksgiving Day Parade…if it was on the TV she could see from the kitchen while she was cooking. The Olympics, both summer and winter. The World Series. That was about it.

Oh, and she loved Superman. She was really into the ’90s Lois and Clark show when it came out.

She also liked The Sandlot. She said it reminded her of growing up in South Dakota and the neighborhood kids playing ball in an empty lot in town.

She bought me and my brothers a VHS copy of the movie the day it came out. There was a release promo copy where you got a Sandlot baseball cap with it. It was a white cap with blue stripes and had the movie logo across the front. I actually found one for sale on eBay, for almost $200!

The Sandlot - Promo Cap
The Sandlot Promo Cap

Anyway, my grandma kept that baseball cap. I think it was originally just to keep me and my brothers from fighting over it, but then she ended up wearing it. For years. It was one of the hats she wore when she was working outside or working around the house.

She often paired it with one of those “I’m A Toys-R-Us Kid” sweatshirts that listeners of a certain age will remember. She would look for them when they went on clearance and had accumulated quite a few different colors over the years.

I remember being out shopping with her and someone saying something like, “Aren’t you a little old for that shirt?”

I’m probably going to butcher this, but her reply was something along the lines of, “You don’t grow up, you choose when to stop being a kid and I haven’t chose to yet.” The exact words have gotten a little fuzzy with age, but the sentiment has stuck with me since that day.

My grandmother passed away a few months ago.

The evening she passed, I was talking with my mom and one of my brothers. My brother was teasing me about having a Christmas podcast. You know, the normal stuff you do to fill the awkward silences while you’re grieving.

He had asked me something like if I was already listening to Christmas music. And before I had a chance to respond, my mom said, very matter-of-factly, “I’ve been listening to a lot of Christmas music,” which caught me completely off guard.

She followed that by saying, “I’ve been playing it for grandma. It’s the only music she liked. The old stuff, you know, the crooners, not that new stuff. That’s what she liked. We’ve been listening to it for the last few weeks. It’s been…nice. I mean, why not?”

What my mom said hit me…hard.

It was sweet, it was vulnerable. It was a nice, comforting thought during a hard time.

It was also the perfect epitome of my grandmother. She was stubborn, she knew what she liked and she didn’t care at all what other people thought of it. Of course she wore a Sandlot baseball cap and Toys-R-Us sweatshirt well into retirement. Of course she listened to Christmas music in October, simply because there was no other music worth listening to. It almost makes too much sense.

Over the last few months, I’ve really been thinking a lot about that and, taking a page from my grandma, I’m attempting to do more things I enjoy…or at least try things that I think I’d enjoy, even if they seem silly or embarrassing.

In other words, and probably much to my wife’s chagrin, I’m getting weird in my mid-40’s. Like, weirder than having a podcast dedicated to Christmas music weird.

Putting myself in front of the camera, like I mentioned at the top, is one example of this. Another is learning to play a musical instrument.

I never took band in school, mainly because I was too embarrassed to perform in front of other people. And that’s largely the same reason I haven’t picked it up as an adult either.

Rover Banjo
Rover Banjo

But, in an attempt to overcome that fear, maybe be a little more like grandma, I asked my wife for a banjo for Christmas. An Irish tenor banjo to be precise. And being the absolutely wonderful person that she is and, once again putting me above her own sanity, she obliged.

I am…not good at it. But I’m trying. And I’m doing it out in the open, where my entire family can…well, enjoy isn’t the right word, but they can definitely hear it. My goal is to be able to play a few Christmas songs in time for this holiday season.

And that seems like a good place to end things tonight. Once again, thank you all for your support and encouragement over the last two years.

Cheers and miss you Grandma!

Posted by Kevin Williams | Friday, March 27, 2026
Vinyl Podcasting Music Collecting Music Banjo Anniversary
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