A Chinese Jig about Santa Clause would be just dandy, thanks

November 11, 2009 3:28 PM

Looking for newer, poppier Christmas/seasonal songs from Ireland and China.

So my girlfriend and I are going to be apart for Christmas with our respective families. Whenever we go on a trip together or she has to go on one alone, I make her a mix CD for the journey. Since she's going back to her Chinese family, and I'm going back to my - well, largely mutt by now, but we act out our Irish side more than anything else - family, I wanted to make her a mix of songs from both cultures representative of the season.

I know that I'm going to open it with The Pogues' Fairytale of New York, and end it with Chris Cornell's rendition of Schubert's Ave Maria (which doesn't actually fit the rules, but we both love it). I'm having trouble finding other good, modern Irish Christmas/wintry songs, and I don't even know where to begin looking for Chinese songs which fit the bill (obviously they won't be Christmas songs, but good winter songs will fit just as well - we're both pretty atheist anyway.)

Modern renditions of classic standards are fine, as long as, again, they are good. Please help me, I want this to be awesome.

posted by Navelgazer to media & arts (5 comments total)

Raglan Road by Luke Kelly is wintry as well as being a beautiful song.

U2? Enya? Cranberries? Van Morrison? Thin Lizzy? The Corrs? Um, Westlife? I don't know their back catalogues at all but there are bound to be some seasonal hits in there. Hit Wikipedia.
posted by fire&wings at 3:49 PM on November 11, 2009

if you have some time before you make the CD, check out the two Christmas channels on Soma FM. they have Christmas music from all over the world.
posted by gursky at 4:52 PM on November 11, 2009

Medieval Baebes has a GREAT Christmas album called "Mistletoe and Wine". The album was on the UK charts for ages, and is traditional and historic seasonal songs.

I like it because it isn't all cheery commercial music, but beautifully performed and nice for enjoying the quiet and dark time of the year.


Sorry, can't think for anything for the Chinese part of the equation. I DO like just the instrumental music with traditional instruments. Very dreamy and pretty...
posted by Jinx of the 2nd Law at 8:58 PM on November 11, 2009

Hmm, that is a tough one. Windham Hill tends toward the New Age/Folk side of things, but you might still check out Celtic Christmas: A Windham Hill Sampler .
posted by gudrun at 5:39 AM on November 12, 2009

U2 did a cover of Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) back in 1987 which is pretty good. You shouldn't have any problems finding it in an mp3 store.

Finding more modern Chinese holiday/seasonal songs is beyond my ken, but Chinese translated versions of Christmas standards such as "Silent Night" (平安夜) do exist, it'll just be hard for you to get copies of those through places like Amazon or iTunes (I just checked - you'd think there'd be at least one compilation album around).
posted by cobwebberies at 8:13 PM on November 23, 2009