>>>>You will be waiting a long time to hear "Silent Night". I am not a very religious person myself, but I still find it so disgraceful that every year their goal seems to be to find more ways to take the Christ out of Christmas.<<<<
This actually is not true, as far as radio is concerned. The rule used to be that you NEVER played a religious Christmas song before Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Radio only played secular Christmas music leading up to the holiday and you only broke out the "Silent Night" and "O Holy Night" for Dec. 24 and 25.
But in 1987, the album "A Very Special Christmas" came out, to benefit Special Olympics. A number of big stars contributed religious Christmas songs. Stevie Nicks (Silent Night), Sting (Gabriel's Message) and Alison Moyet (The Coventry Carol) all recorded hymns. My guess is the artists simply chose songs they liked themselves and the producers of the LP didn't say no. Radio decided it couldn't ignore those songs. And the "No Religious Christmas Music till Dec. 24" rule went out the window.
So today, when stations go all-Christmas in mid-November, religious songs are in the mix, be it iHeart, Cumulus, Entercom, Cox or anyone else. Maybe ChannelFlipper would like to see a higher percentage of religious songs. But there are hymns in the mix as soon as the All-Christmas format begins.