One of my daily Facebook feeds is part of the daily morning prayer from the Episcopalian Book of Common Prayer, and it always includes an appropriate hymn or choral piece. Tuesday morning it was this:

If it sounds familiar, you may remember this:

The subject of villancinos—medieval Spanish songs–themselves, which are not necessarily Christmas carols but have become associated with Christmas is something I need to read (and maybe write) more about. This villancino reminded me of the Christmas albums my family brought out every December for tree decorating and cookie-making.

See, one of the albums we always dragged out was this one:

And that album contained this untitled villancino which I have spent a lot of time trying to track down, but with no success:

I liked all of the choral music on that album, but I adored the exotic sound of that snippet.

And we had an album with music for kids, and in keeping with the Spanish language theme, I offer you this now slightly cringy song:

I never fully understood my parents’ musical taste, but this album was one of the Christmas staples and this is the one song I can remember from this album:

It still baffles me. There was also a Perry Como Christmas album which we kids never played because we just detested that hateful man.

But there was one Christmas record that we broke out when we started decorating the tree—when we heard this:

We knew it was Christmas.

I haven’t thought about these records in years. Funny how hearing one thing sparked the memories. I’ll leave you with another blast from the past: