Newly minted Christmas carols brim with nostalgia and good cheer

Megan Hilty

Megan Hilty’s holiday album

There’s a lot to love—and feel warm about—in the season’s latest Christmas recordings: On top of our list is “Wonderland,” Sarah McLachlan’s second Christmas album, which features hauntingly rendered covers of carols that brim with nostalgia and good cheer.

The 48-year-old Canadian songstress tweaks her songs with fresh arrangements that turn her oft-recorded choices into intimate hymns and personal stories about loss, heartbreak and revival, as she demonstrates with moving clarity and perceptive insight in “The Christmas Song,” “Let It Snow,” “O Come All Ye Faithful” and the ethereal “Angels We Have Heard on High.”

Also notable are her countrified spin on “Away in a Manger,” the soaring “Go Tell It On the Mountain” and the ineluctably rendered traditional ditty, “Huron Carol.”

In “A Merry Little Christmas,” Megan Hilty proves that all a Yuletide collection needs is seamless, impeccable singing to breathe new life into well-loved holiday tunes like “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and “Santa Baby.”

But the 35-year-old stage luminary really hits it out of the ball park in the seldom-covered tracks she sings: Her classically trained trills are a must-hear in “There’s Always Tomorrow.” Meanwhile, “Bless Us All” and “River” are guaranteed to fill music lovers’ Yuletide season with hope and optimism.

When Megan performs her version of “A Place Called Home,” her impassioned singing will persuade listeners that the so-called “light at the end of the tunnel” is no myth.

Garth Brooks and wife Trisha Yearwood

The tune is gorgeously and compellingly sung from beginning to end, but the thespian is at her most reassuring when she convincingly intones, “Through the dark of the night let your heart come home to me.”

Garth Brooks’ special gift for his followers comes by way of “Christmas Together,” his collaboration with his second wife, Trisha Yearwood, whom he married in 2005.

When they aren’t singing fun and frothy duets (“I’m Beginning to See the Light,” “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” and “Marshmallow World”), they take turns singing solo covers of carols.

Garth seems like he’s having a blast in “Ugly Christmas Sweater” (about a lovely woman with poor sartorial taste), the inspiring “Merry Christmas Means I Love You,” the country-Latin fusion of “Feliz Navidad,” and his duet with James Taylor, “What I’m Thankful For.”

But it’s Trisha who steals the crowd-pleasing show in the exuberant “The Man with the Bag,” “Santa Baby” (a track that bursts with frisky mischief), and the bittersweet love song, “Hard Candy Christmas.”

Sarah McLachlan