I'm not kidding, this is my favorite Christmas album, A Partridge Family Christmas Card. Really.
The Partridge Family was an early 1970's TV show with a family of musicians who had a crazy painted bus they traveled around in. Think hippy Brady Bunch musicians, something like that. The show ran from 1970 to 1974, and this Christmas album was released in 1971.
I think I was in third grade, my family living in Coshocton, Ohio, when my parents found this record album at a garage sale, and bought it for 25 or 50 cents. I remember listening to this album when I was in 4th grade, 9 years old, while making Christmas cookies with my mom and sister the next Christmas. We had moved to a big, yellow farmhouse, outside the tiny community of Shiloh, Ohio. My dad changed jobs that year, and was designing locomotives at Fate Root Heath, in nearby Plymouth. Somehow one of us managed to get flour all over this already used record, and thought we ruined it. My dad cleaned it off when we he got home, and it was playable again. We played that album every Christmas until I was in high school. To me, this is the quintessential Christmas album to get in the holiday mood. Watching Bad Santa is my other main source of holiday cheer. Yeah, I'm fucked up, but these two get me feeling festive. Enjoy.
Here's the link to the album playlist, in case the embedded video only plays one song.
Merry Christmas everyone. Enjoy the holidays, because next year's going to be even crazier than the last five years have been.
