Dhurat – Pare

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Christmas Present is a Christmas album by American pop singer Andy Williams that was released in October 1974 by Columbia Records and, apart from the title track, focused strictly on traditional carols. While his previous holiday LPs were released during the run of his variety series, which ended in 1971, this album was promoted the December following its release through one of his many Christmas specials.[4] An article titled “MOR Artists Are Ailing” in Billboard magazine’s November 23, 1974, issue describes the hopes that the record company had for the album: “Columbia is releasing Andy Williams’ newest LP, ‘Christmas Present,’ with considerable advance orders and expects it to become a holiday classic to continue the string of album winners for the artist.”[5]

Williams’s two previous solo Christmas LPs (The Andy Williams Christmas Album and Merry Christmas) reached number one on Billboard magazine’s Christmas Albums chart, but in 1974 the magazine reverted to incorporating holiday releases into its Top LP’s and Tapes rankings as well as its Bubbling Under the Top LP’s chart, which, according to Joel Whitburn, “listed albums that were on the rise in sales that did not quite achieve the sales necessary to make Billboard’s main 200-position pop albums chart.”[6] Christmas Present “bubbled under” the Top LP’s & Tapes chart for two weeks that began in the issue dated December 21, 1974, and took the album to a peak position at number 203.[7]

The album was released for the first time on CD in 1990.[2] It was also included in a 2013 compilation of his Columbia Christmas releases titled The Complete Christmas Recordings.

“Christmas gift” is an exclamation traced back as early as 1844 in the southern United States.[1] It is derived from the tradition of saying “Christmas gift!” among typically poor African American and Anglo farming families in rural areas, when people would wake on Christmas morning and rush to say “Christmas gift” before anyone else. The person being told “Christmas gift!” is expected to present the person saying it to them with a present. In addition, while “Merry Christmas” is the common and current seasonal salutation, “Christmas gift” was an equivalent expression used in the rural south and also in southern Pennsylvania, Ohio Valley, West Virginia, and later in northeastern Texas as a simple greeting and recognizing the birth of Christ as a gift.[2]

A variant of the tradition is “Christmas Eve gift”. The tradition is similar to the “Christmas gift” tradition, but occurs on Christmas Eve. The person being told “Christmas Eve gift!” is expected to present the person saying it to them with a small present, traditionally candy or nuts.[3] The Dictionary of American Regional English traces the first written uses of this version to 1954.