Starting shortly after my birth, my parents purchased Christmas albums for $1 from an unlikely place, tire stores.

(That’s as unusual as getting, for instance, glasses every time you filled up at your favorite gas station, but older readers might remember that too, back in the days when gas stations were usually part of a car repair place, not a convenience store.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-Vad7FKJUA

The albums featured contemporary artists from the ’60s, plus opera singers and other artists.

These albums were played on my parents’ wall-length Magnavox hi-fi player.

Playing these albums was as annual a ritual as watching “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas,” “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” or other holiday-season appointment TV.

Those albums began my, and then our, collection of Christmas music.

You may think some of these singers are unusual choices to sing Christmas music. (This list includes at least six Jewish singers.)

Of course, Christians know that Jesus Christ was Jewish.

And I defy any reader to find anyone who can sing “Silent Night” like Barbra Streisand did in the ’60s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aauSyktv88

These albums are available for purchase online, but record players are now as outmoded as, well, getting glasses with your fill-up at the gas station.

But thanks to YouTube and other digital technology, other aficionados of this era of Christmas music now can have their music preserved for their current and future enjoyment.

The tire-store-Christmas-album list has been augmented by both earlier and later works.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykdj-T3jU8k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXCEdrnaFlY

In the same way I think no one can sing “Silent Night” like Barbra Streisand, I think no one can sing “Do You Hear What I Hear” like Whitney Houston:

This list contains another irony — an entry from “A Christmas Gift for You,” Phil Spector’s Christmas album. (Spector’s birthday is Christmas.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co7ZGOjGV4A

The album should have been a bazillion-seller, and perhaps would have been had it not been for the date of its initial release: Nov. 22, 1963.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi9kvO2zL2E

Finally, here’s a previous iteration of one of the currently coolest TV traditions — “The Late Show with David Letterman” and its annual appearance of Darlene Love (from the aforementioned Phil Spector album):

Merry Christmas.