This 24-track double LP was originally released on September 1973, and then later on CD in 1995. The funky and largely secular holiday set includes seven songs by Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5, five by Diana Ross & the Supremes, and four each by Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, and Smokey Robinson & the Miracles. The track listing is filled with classic Christmas songs, including "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town," "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," "Jingle Bells," "Silver Bells," and "White Christmas." Some of the offbeat gems in the collection include Diana Ross' cover of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music and Stevie Wonder's beautiful "Ave Maria." Culled from individual Christmas albums released by Motown during the late '60s, this is the definitive version, with a wonderful Free to Be You and Me-style cover. Overall, a warm and nostalgic Christmas album and one of the best of its kind. Two inferior Christmas packages borrowing from this larger set were released, a ten-track Merry Christmas From Motown in 1996 and a 12-track version of A Motown Christmas in 1999. ~ JT Griffith
