The Carpenters - (There's No Place Like) Home For The Holidays

You can't describe this song without the word "iconic".  It's an iconic song, recorded by Perry Como in 1954, and this version is iconic - really the only version that you hear these days.  That's a bit unusual because it didn't really chart very high when it was released in 1984.  Perhaps it's because Karen Carpenter's vocals are liquid gold, and perhaps it's because she died before the album was released, but there's a depth (dare we say a bitter sweetness?) to this version that makes it the platonic ideal of a Christmas song.