Feeling festive? Stream Christmas music online, free

It always marked a special season of torture for my little sister and I when my mother would dust off her Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby Christmas albums- waiting for them to be packed back up was worse than waiting for presents.

I hate Christmas music- all of it. But there are many out there who welcome the stuff, Paul McCartney’s Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time and that awful Mariah Carey song, so much so that they’re out in droves Googling the stuff. If you’re not getting your seasonal allotment of horrible Christmas tunes via the car radio or in stores, there are places online you can stream the stuff for free all season.

While your local station might be streaming tunes (and ads) on their website, Pandora is a great option for Christmas tunes if you’re not using it already. (And if you’re not, why aren’t you using it already?) While you don’t have complete control over what you can play- “skips” are limited to five an hour, per station- the music streaming site offers 99 Christmas stations as of now to just click and play. Christmas Blues, Classical Christmas, Country Christmas, Folk Holidays, Jazz Holidays, Peaceful Holidays, Pop & R&B Holidays, Rockin’ Holidays and Swingin’ Holidays are just some of the options available on Pandora to sate your Christmas music cravings.

If you’re new to Pandora (who moved the rock?), then just click here to create a station. Typing in Christmas yields the dozens of stations, and you won’t have to listen to a genre you don’t like. And if you tire of streaming one type of Christmas music station, there are at least 98 others to choose from, giving you another five skips if you’re not digging it.