If you think you're ready for Christmas because you've done a little shopping and bought a tree, meet Roch Voisine.

"You think (this is) early? We've been working on the album since summer," laughs the singer-songwriter.

Voisine has released his first Christmas record, L'Album de Noel, and its English-language counterpart, Christmas Is Calling (RV International/BMG), and now is in the middle of a flurry of activity surrounding both releases.

He has already filmed French and English holiday TV specials, he's been doing promotional work in Canada and in France and he's just getting ready to do a handful of Canadian concerts -- including a show at Centennial Hall tomorrow night -- that will keep him working until Dec. 23.

"Since I haven't been on tour for a little while in English Canada . . . I'm my own opening act," says Voisine. "I walk on with a guitar and spend a half-hour with people singing old favourites and just chatting a bit and getting to know each other better."

The TV special airs Dec. 17 on CBC-TV at 7 p.m. It includes material shot at his grandmother's house in New Brunswick and the church where the young Voisine sang in the choir.

There is a visit to another childhood landmark, too. "We taped a few moments in the hockey rink where I started to play hockey when I was a kid."

Over the last three years, the Quebec-based Voisine has been in France re-connecting with the audience that made him so big. After Kissing Rain, the follow-up to his 1993 English-language breakthrough, I'll Always Be There, he recorded Chaque feu (Every Fire) in 1998 and took a hiatus from the English world.

He also had to pick up the pieces after his manager, Paul Vincent, died in 1997.

The Christmas album and cross-Canada tour -- and his role as a special representative for UNICEF Canada -- are just the things to get reacquainted with English fans.

Christmas Is Calling is a warm contemporary collection of 14 classics, including Joy to the World and Little Drummer Boy, as well as the title track of the album, which is a Voisine original.

The songwriter says that the four-month painstaking endeavour behind the CD was equal parts compiling the track list and equal parts recording those songs.

"If you look at the credits, we were probably as busy as Santa's elves."

He wanted to stay away from some of the Christmas CD cliches -- going with what he calls "a personalized house band" approach, instead of the floods of strings and other add-ons.

In feel, it's somewhat like Willie Nelson's classic Christmas CD, Pretty Paper, and that tune was one Voisine considered before settling on some personal favourites, including John Lennon's Happy Christmas (War Is Over).

"It was a long process of screening and finding the right songs and the right keys. Musically speaking, I wanted to find fresh ideas for the songs, without losing the classic Christmas feel to it," he says.

"That's probably why some people make Christmas records in one or two weeks and some people make them in a day.

"But that's also why a lot of those Christmas records don't stand the test of time."

Voisine is hoping his CD, or at the very least his title song, will.

"Christmas Is Calling is a classic Christmas tune. It's a new one, but it's a classic way of writing one," he says.

"A lot of people have added it to their Christmas lists, so maybe next year it will still be played.

"That's really nice, because when you write a new Christmas song, you're standing on the edge of oblivion."