Holiday playlists change every year, but a handful of Christmas records from the 1950s and 1960s still feel like the season’s default soundtrack. These albums mix lush orchestration, crooner warmth, ...

As we head into December 2025, both Brenda Lee and Bobby Helms are in the Top 5 on Billboard’s Holiday 100 — for 1958’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” and 1957’s “Jingle Bell Rock,” respectively.

Some Christmas records do more than soundtrack the season, they reset the whole mood the second the needle drops. The ’50s and ’60s were packed with those kinds of albums, and plenty of them still ...