Give Me Your Love for Christmas
Give Me Your Love for Christmas is the third Christmas album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis and was released by Columbia Records on October 13, 1969. The oldest song selected for this project was the 1934 classic "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town", which meant there were not the traditional hymns that could be found on his previous Christmas outings. He did, however, cover several other contemporary Christmas favorites along with a few new and lesser-known songs, such as the title track, which was a reworking of an unreleased recording of his  from 1961, and "Christmas Day", which came from the then-current Broadway musical "Promises, Promises". New versions of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and "The Little Drummer Boy", which he also recorded in 1963 for his previous Christmas LP, "Sounds of Christmas", made the final track list here as well. The album debuted on "Billboard" magazine's Christmas Albums sales chart in the issue dated December 6, 1969, and spent one of its four weeks there at number one. It also appeared on the magazine's seasonal LP chart each year from 1970 to 1973 as well as in  1987 and 1988. On December 26, 1979, it received its first award from the Recording Industry Association of America when it reached the US sales mark of 500,000 copies necessary for Gold status. The recording of "Do You Hear What I Hear?" from this album was heard in the 1984 film "Gremlins". On September 1, 2001, the album was released on compact disc for the first time, and two months later, on November 5, it was awarded Platinum certification by the RIAA for sales of one million copies in the US. The tracks from this album were also reissued as  part of the 2015 Mathis compilation "The Complete Christmas Collection 1958–2010", a 3-CD set on the Real Gone Music label. Reception. "Billboard" felt that the "Mathis touch is warmly suited to the spirit of the season and the songs cover the Yule holiday appropriately". Recording dates. From the liner notes for "The Complete Christmas Collection 1958-2010":