Every year, when I start listening to Christmas music in early November, (OK, fine, more like October), I always start with my Christmas with the Rat Pack CD. It’s my favorite. I love how retro it is, I love the voices of Frank, Dean, and Sammy, and I love the selection of songs on it.

But, the closer we get to Christmas Eve every year, the more I want to listen to sacred music. Not just hymns, but music sung by a beautiful choir in a cathedral…you know the type. I tire of the secular songs, much as I love them, I tire of contemporary Christian Christmas music, which sounds trite next to the old hymns, I tire of pop voices singing old favorites. I want something that sounds…holy. And ancient. And reverent.

In church on Sunday, our pastor was preaching about Advent, and how Advent is a time of not us preparing ourselves, but of us being prepared by God. And I came to the realization that perhaps this is what happens to me every Advent season–God using music to prepare my heart for Jesus’s coming. Maybe that’s why I want to listen to sacred Christmas so badly as the holy day itself nears.

Then again, it could also be that I’m simply reading too much into it, and that it’s just a phase I got through every year, but it’s something interesting to think about, to be sure!