Every year for the past decade-and-a-half or so, I’ve sent out a Christmas music compilation CD as my holiday card to friends and family. It’s typically about 20 tracks of “traditional” Christmas songs (so Weezer’s “Silent Night” could be on there, but not “Santa Claus Goes Straight to the Ghetto” by Snoop’s Dogg Pound), because those are the classics that get me all warm and fuzzy around the time the trees go bare and the gas bill goes up. For the first few years it was a piece of cake. Vince Guaraldi’s Charlie Brown Christmas CD showed up every year, as did gems from collections by Frank Sinatra, Etta James, James Taylor, and Tony Bennett. But a CD greeting card that goes out each and every year, basically containing renditions of the same relatively small pool of songs, desperately needs variety to make it worthwhile year in and year out. As time went by, that became a real challenge. Run DMC’s “Christmas in Hollis” is awesome, but those well-known one-off-type tracks will make your compilations seem gimmicky if they keep showing up every year. To keep it interesting, you gotta find the deep cuts – and keep finding them year in and year out, despite the limited number of new Christmas CDs entering the picture each year.

In this ongoing hunt over the years, I’ve found some really wonderful music, though, and figured this weekend, as we kick off the official holiday season, I’d share a few of my favorites (some albums, some individual songs). This is in hopes that you, EW.com readers, will share yours with me (more fodder for next year’s collection – the Holiday 2010 mix is already a wrap). So without further ado, in no particular order: READ FULL STORY »