Music to Watch Christmas Elves By (2024 Edition)

My annual roundup of vintage Xmas Muzak mixes!

Dec 16, 2024

Christmas, NYC 2019 (Photo by Dan Epstein)

Several years ago around this time, I discovered that a veritable motherlode of 1960s and 70s Christmas Muzak mixes — the sort made specifically to enhance the retail experience of holiday shoppers at department stores like Kresge and K-Mart — existed on the internet, a discovery that delighted me in the same way that unearthing the ruins of Troy and Mycenae must have delighted Heinrich Schliemann.

Nothing transports me back to the giddy bliss of my childhood Christmases quite like the canned holiday-themed easy listening of yore. Yes, I realize that some of you folks will find my obsession with these particular sounds completely perverse. But I’m a big believer in taking (comfort and) joy wherever you may find it, especially in the musical realms; and Xmas Muzak makes me indescribably happy, despite its total lack of funk, fuzz or any other redeemably edgy qualities.

And I know that there are many others out there who feel the same way, which is why for many Decembers now I’ve posted an ongoing Facebook thread linking to as much of these holiday cheese platters as I can find. In 2022, I moved the party over here to Jagged Time Lapse, where the tradition continues today...

So if Xmas music of the schmaltzy, dreamy and supremely smooth variety lights your particular Yule log, you’ll want to pull up a hot toddy or spiked egg nog and wrap yourself in this soothing aural wallpaper — and you’ll definitely want to bookmark this newsletter.

(This is a long one — so if you’ve received this post via email, be sure to click “View entire message” to read and hear the entire contents.)

The mixes I’ve found are all embedded here for your immediate holiday listening pleasure; but if you’re still into downloading digital music files, I’ve included download links where applicable. (All old links and audio embeds here have been double-checked to make sure that they still work, and a few new ones have been added since last year.)

Let’s kick the festivities off with this K-Mart Christmas 1974 mix — nearly 2 hours of the good stuff (by which I mean Hollyridge Strings, Ferrante & Teicher, Andre Kostelanetz, etc.) — which can also be downloaded here from the Internet Archive)…

And don’t miss the 1960's Supermarket During The Holidays Playlist, which includes Metro Strings, Tony Vale, Medallion Orchestra, etc.; no download link but the video comes complete with some lovely vintage retail images.

And then there’s 1970s Christmas Mall Muzak playing in an empty mall, nearly two hours of stuff which unsurprisingly sounds like it’s from the 1960s or 1950s — 1970s Muzak tended to lean heavily on sounds from earlier eras — but with the added bonus of many vintage mall pics! (No download link for this one, either.)

Still want more? Oh boy, are you in luck…

S. S. Kresge Christmas Background Music Record No. 219C (46 minutes of orchestral and organ-oriented Xmas instrumentals from George Malachrino, Mantovani, etc. Download here.)

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