Martina, Chapin Aid New Christmas CDs

Martina McBride photo courtesy of Sony BMG Nashville.

Dec. 23, 2008 — Women made a major contribution to Christmas music for the 2008 holiday season as acts such as Faith Hill, Julianne Hough and Mary Chapin Carpenter delivered new albums. And even a yuletide project featuring Elvis Presley paired him exclusively in duets with female stars, including Martina McBride, Gretchen Wilson and Sara Evans.

Doing a Christmas album sounds easy: Pick out your favorite songs and slam them out. But the same songs have been recorded hundreds of times, making it difficult for an artist to give the classics a new attitude. And the music usually gets recorded when the musicians aren’t really in the Christmas spirit.

A few observations on some of this year’s new Christmas music:

• Mary Chapin Carpenter’s album Come Darkness, Come Light: 12 Songs Of Christmas endeavored to round up songs that haven’t been oversaturated. "Like everyone else, I love to sing [holiday music] at the top of my lungs, but I didn't know if I wanted to make a record of it," she told The Richmond Times-Dispatch. "I didn't think the world needed another Christmas album with just more commercial music on it. They just wanted a straight-ahead commercial record, so I would just beg off every year."

• The Julianne Hough Holiday Collection was made for sale exclusively through Target and ended up among country’s Top 10 albums. "I picked all my favorites — the ones that I want to wrap Christmas presents to, or listen to at a big party," she told People. "You can do these classics and put your own twist on it."

• Songwriter Gretchen Peters — known for Martina McBride’s "Independence Day" and Faith Hill’s "The Secret Of Life" — stepped outside the usual holiday tone for her album Northern Lights: "I wondered if I could be honest, as a writer, about the melancholy that many people feel at Christmas. We all tend to reflect at the end of the year — and our reflections quite naturally include loss and regret, as well as gratitude and happiness. I wanted to make a Christmas record that you could listen to at night when you're all alone and not come away feeling depressed, but instead feeling moved by the whole of human experience, not just the happy parts."

• Elvis Presley Christmas Duets pairs the King with LeAnn Rimes, Carrie Underwood, Anne Murray and the female members of Little Big Town. Martina McBride sang with Elvis on "Blue Christmas," and she thinks the CD is a no-brainer. "It's Elvis, first of all," she told The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. "I just think it's neat to hear other people singing with him, his classic... songs."

• Faith Hill made her album Joy To The World over several years and across several seasons. "You would think it would be difficult with it not being the Christmas season," she told Reuters, "but when you record something that you're really proud of, it kind of stands the test of time, any time of the year."

You can see Faith singing those songs throughout Christmas Day on GAC. The special — Faith Hill, Joy To The World — airs on GAC at 10 p.m. ET on Christmas Eve and three times on Christmas Day: 2 a.m., 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. ET.