Photos: Universal Music Group

There is a lot of holiday music coming out in the coming weeks, but a highly-anticipated album dropped on Friday… the first Christmas album from Darren Criss!

The singer/actor, best known for a breakout role on the musical FOX series Glee, has released his first full-length venture into holiday music, and we think it was long overdue. Darren’s beautiful voice is perfect for the Christmas season, so we suggest checking out his album, A Very Darren Crissmas!

On the record, you’ll find traditional holiday tracks like “The Christmas Song” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” as well as more modern covers like Criss’ rendition of John Mayer‘s “St. Patrick’s Day” and Regina Spektor‘s “New Year”.  He also teams up with actress Evan Rachel Wood on “Somewhere In My Memory”, from the Home Alone soundtrack, and with former Glee co-star Adam Lambert for “(Everybody’s Waitin’ For) The Man With The Bag”.

Photos: FOX

Last night “Glee” aired a Christmas episode, which was filmed with the rest of the season but was supposed to be an episode that was banned in 2012, hence the title: 5×08 “Previously Unaired Christmas”. I guess it was a tongue-in-cheek thing.

In the episode, Kurt (Chris Colfer, not pictured), Rachel (Lea Michele) and Santana (Naya Rivera) got jobs as elves for a NYC mall Santa Land display and, while they had bad luck with their Santa–they looked super cute in their holiday costumes!