Whats your gut response when you hear a Mariah Carey Christmas song?

[hlthe2b]

5. I avoid enough commercial Christmas music such that I can tolerate it (and most others) a couple times

throughout the season. I really don't tire of Vince Guaraldi (Charlie Brown Christmas) and a couple of other selections, but the rest of the repetitive classics make me crazy if I hear them too much.

I do enjoy some non-commercial, far more traditional carols played on very traditional (less common) instruments though. Among the albums that fits that bill is Buce Cockburn's Christmas album from 1993 (the subject of an NPR interview that year that fascinated me). He and his band spent years locating those instruments and learning how to play them, as well as learning quite a few languages. Here from that album is the old Spanish carol that was once the call of Basque sheepherders, Riu Rui Chiu.

" title="Bruce Cockburn - Riu, Riu, Chiu