The Andy Williams Christmas Album on Vinyl: 1963 Original, Reissues and the Other Andy Williams Christmas LPs (2026)

If you're hunting for the LP with "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year," you want The Andy Williams Christmas Album, released on Columbia on 14 October 1963. The stereo pressing carries catalogue number CS 8887, and a mono edition was issued alongside it — both are detailed in the pressing table further down this page. This is the album that spent time at No. 1 on Billboard's Christmas Albums chart in 1963, 1964 and 1965, and which unexpectedly climbed back to No. 11 on the Billboard 200 in December 2025, nearly sixty years after release.

The confusion is understandable: Williams's warm, orchestral style barely changed across his Christmas catalogue, the cover art often features similar red-and-green Christmas imagery, and reissue labels have repackaged tracks from multiple albums under near-identical titles. Before you buy, confirm the song lineup — specifically, check for "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" as side 1, track 4 — rather than trusting the album title alone. The same rule of cross-checking the actual tracklist applies whenever you're trying to pin down how to identify rare vinyl pressings in any genre.

Andy Williams released eight distinct Christmas albums during his recording career, and that's the single biggest source of search confusion around this LP. Only the first one is the 1963 original most people mean when they say "the Andy Williams Christmas album." The second-most-searched is Merry Christmas, from 1965, which is a different album entirely despite the similar generic title and holiday theme.

• The Andy Williams Christmas Album (1963) — Columbia CS 8887 stereo. Contains "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year." The one collectors mean by default.
• Merry Christmas (1965) — Columbia CS 9220, released 18 October 1965. RIAA Gold in 1968, Platinum in 1989. A separate recording session with a different tracklist.
• Christmas Present (1974) — Columbia C 33191. Only "bubbled under" the Billboard album chart; far less commercially successful than the first two.
• Five further Christmas-themed releases followed across later decades, with varying mixes of new recordings and repackaged earlier tracks.

If you're building out a broader seasonal shelf, our best Christmas albums on vinyl guide covers how these compare to other classic holiday LPs worth owning.

The 1963 album was pressed repeatedly across the 1960s and into later decades, in both mono and stereo, with the catalogue number, label design, and runout details changing between pressings. Rather than guess from a cover photo, the table below — pulled from the album's Discogs master and checked 12 October 2026 — lists every known edition side by side, mono and stereo together.

Read this table by matching your copy's catalogue number and country first, then narrowing down by label design and runout etching if more than one pressing shares a catalogue number. The 1963 rows — stereo CS 8887 and its mono counterpart — are the originals; everything else is a later repressing or reissue. For a full walkthrough of what those codes stamped near the run-out groove actually mean, see our guide to vinyl catalog numbers explained.

Both mono and stereo versions of the andy williams christmas album vinyl exist from the original 1963 release — Columbia issued most of its major 1963 pop releases in both formats to serve consumers still buying mono hi-fi equipment alongside early stereo adopters. The stereo catalogue number CS 8887 is confirmed; the equivalent mono edition is listed in the pressing table above rather than restated here, since catalogue numbers vary by pressing run.

As a general rule, Columbia's label artwork design changed over the decades the album stayed in print, and those design differences are one of the most reliable ways to date a copy without needing a release year printed anywhere on the sleeve. A later-decade repress will typically show a different label layout than a 1960s pressing of the same catalogue number. Rather than memorizing every label variant by year, cross-reference your copy's specific label text and logo placement against the pressing table, and read our broader guide on how to date a vinyl record for the general method — matrix numbers, runout etchings and label typography together, not any single clue alone.

Because The Andy Williams Christmas Album has stayed continuously popular — helped along by its recurring chart comeback every December — Columbia kept it in print for years after 1963, and it has appeared on later compilation and reissue runs since. If a copy you're looking at doesn't match the catalogue number, label design, or runout details in the pressing table above, it's most likely one of these later editions rather than the original 1963 stereo or mono pressing.

Reissues aren't a problem if you simply want the music — the recordings are the same whichever pressing you own, and a clean later copy will sound close to indistinguishable from an early one on a decent turntable. Where it matters is expectation: a reissue should be bought and valued as a reissue, not priced or described as an "andy williams christmas album original" pressing. Always compare the physical details against the table rather than trusting a seller's listing title, since the keyword "original" gets applied loosely across online marketplaces.

Here's the honest answer nobody wants but every buyer needs: there is no widely published high-dollar value for this album, and that's by design of its own success. A record certified Gold in 1964 and Platinum in 1986 was pressed in enormous quantities across multiple decades, which puts it firmly in the category of commonly found rather than scarce. Collectors scanning completed and active listings on Discogs or Popsike will notice the same pattern that applies to most Platinum-era holiday records: plentiful supply keeps typical asking prices modest, and condition does almost all the work in separating a low-value copy from a genuinely desirable one.

That doesn't mean every copy is worthless or interchangeable. A sealed, unplayed early 1960s stereo pressing in the correct period Columbia sleeve, graded Near Mint under standard vinyl grading standards, will always attract more interest than a scratched reading-copy repress — the gap is about condition and originality, not rarity. If you want to understand how genuinely scarce records are priced differently from common ones like this, our most valuable vinyl records guide and our broader list of Christmas vinyl records worth money are useful points of comparison.

Because this LP is common rather than rare, condition is the single biggest value driver you control as a buyer or seller. Inspect the vinyl under a strong light for the usual culprits — groove wear, hairline scratches, warping and seam splits on the jacket — and grade honestly using the Goldmine-style standard scale running from Mint down through Good, rather than optimistic marketplace self-grading. A Near Mint early pressing in a Very Good+ jacket is a very different purchase than a Good+ record in any jacket, even with identical catalogue numbers.

Before paying for any "original," ask for or take clear photos of the label and the deadwax runout area, since that's where catalogue number, pressing plant codes and mastering details live. Tools like VinylAI can help you scan a barcode or snap a photo of a record in a store and cross-check it instantly against known pressing data, which takes the guesswork out of deciding whether that bin copy is the early Columbia stereo pressing or a later repress. If this is one of your first forays into pressing-level detective work, our how to start a vinyl collection guide covers the fundamentals of grading and buying with confidence.

The Andy Williams Christmas LP most people actually want is the 1963 Columbia original with "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year," and now you know exactly how to separate it from the seven other Christmas albums bearing Andy Williams's name — including the genuinely different Merry Christmas from 1965. Use the pressing table, not the title on the cover, to confirm what you're holding, and remember that with an album this widely pressed, condition will almost always matter more than catalogue number when it comes to value.

Whether you're chasing the stereo CS 8887 original, happy with a later repress for listening, or simply trying to figure out if that dusty copy at a thrift store is worth the asking price, pair this guide with a quick scan in VinylAI before you buy. It's a far more reliable method than guessing from a faded label across a crowded record store bin.