Goodyear got in the game as well as Firestone.  But they did it first.  I think most people would assume that Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company got into the Christmas album game because Firestone did.  I think a lot of people might think this because the Firestone series was so popular.  In fact, Goodyear released their first Christmas album in their series “The Great Songs Of Christmas” in 1961, one year before Firestone’s first release.  And the Goodyear series was probably as popular as the Firestone series, but most people may not even realize that they had the Goodyear albums.  This is because Goodyear did not display their name or logo very prominently on the album covers like Firestone did.  It usually appeared in very small print somewhere on the front and back covers, accompanied by the tag line, “Limited Edition Collectors Album created exclusively for Goodyear by Columbia Special Products”.

The Goodyear Christmas album series was titled “The Great Songs Of Christmas”.  All the albums started with this title, and the various volumes were given different subtitles, with most along the lines of “By the Great Artists of Our Time”, or something similar.

Another difference between the Firestone series and the Goodyear series is that while the Firestone selections were recorded exclusively for Firestone, the selections in the Goodyear series were previously recorded Christmas songs by Columbia Records recording artists and could be found on their own Christmas records.  If they weren’t on Columbia, they didn’t appear on the Goodyear Christmas albums.

The original series included ten volumes.  For the last album in the series, in 1970, Goodyear released a compilation album of previous Christmas songs featured in Volumes 1 – 9.  The title was still “The Great Songs of Christmas”, but preceded with “Best of…”, and “Album 10” found in small print, just as with all the other volumes.