Gala Germany Christmas Winter 2016

In the pristine Bavarian Alps, Mama Flora's hotel - once a popular tourist destination - has become a home for refugees. Cafe Waldluft is a rustic hotel in the picturesque Bavarian town of Berchtesgaden, near Hitler's former mountain retreat. Over the past few years, tourist numbers and the business have started to decline, so when Flora Kurz, the cafe owner, was approached by the German authorities to house refugees, she decided to fill her rooms with asylum seekers from Syria, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone.

Neil Diamond's first two holiday albums were plainly titled The Christmas Album and The Christmas Album, Vol. 2, which gave a pretty good indication of the by-the-book music they contained, just like how the very name of 2009's A Cherry Cherry Christmas is a tip-off that this collection is a decidedly less serious affair, even if it recycles a good chunk of the same recordings that comprised those earlier albums. A Cherry Cherry Christmas keeps a barbershop quartet arrangement of "Deck the Halls," a doo wop "White Christmas," and a swinging "Jingle Bell Rock," but what's notable are the additions: a ridiculous, self-celebrating "Cherry Cherry Christmas" that's trumped only by a goofy cover of Adam Sandler's "Chanukah Song." These two new cuts make Diamond seem like the garrulous uncle at your family's holiday party, the one who is eager to prove how cool he is, which only makes him seem all the more out of touch.

If you are looking for a classic collection of all the favourite old Christmas/winter songs, sung by all the original artists, then look no further - they are all here in this collection of three CDs. Possibly they have been padded out slightly by adding a few extra songs which didn't fit with the theme, but otherwise it is just the job for cheering you up over the busy Christmas season.