YOU CAN NEVER have enough jingle, jangle, jingle in your holidays. In 1986, at the behest of dB's bassist Gene Holder, guitarist Chris Stamey—a former member of the cultish alt-pop outfits the dB's and the Golden Palominos—rounded up a who's who of '80s jangle pop, including pals Alex Chilton (and his band Big Star), Whiskeytown (with Ryan Adams), influential producer and session player Don Dixon, occasional REM sideman Peter Holsapple and Marshall Crenshaw, for a one-off holiday album, Christmas Time—Again. It's been newly remixed (by Stamey) and remastered for a 2006 reissue.

It's an often irreverent, always hip and rockin' good time—and a welcomed respite from the standard holiday fare. Highlights include the dB's whimsical consumer ode "Holiday Spirit" ("I've got that holiday spirit/ Gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme!"), Chilton crooning Mel Torme's holiday chestnut "The Christmas Song," Whiskeytown's country-drenched soldier's elegy "Houses on the Hill" and Ted Lyon's gunfighter parody "The Only Law That Santa Claus Understood."

Christmas Break: Relaxing Jazz for the Holidays sheds a more mellow tone on the season's proceedings. The dozen tracks feature holiday standards delivered in crystalline sound by such big-name acts as Oscar Peterson ("White Christmas"), Mel Torme ("Christmas Time Is Here" from A Charlie Brown Christmas), Dave Brubeck ("Silent Night") and Jim Hall ("O Tannenbaum"). Classic stuff.

A Charlie Brown Christmas, pianist Vince Guaraldi's soundtrack to the timeless holiday TV special, is back in a newly remastered deluxe edition with four bonus tracks. For me, it ain't Christmas till I've heard Guaraldi's tender ballad "Christmas Time Is Here."

Meanwhile, singer and songwriter Brett Dennen has jumped headlong into the holiday fray with the CD single "The Holidays Are Here (And We're Still at War)," not likely to be a big hit around George and Laura's Christmas tree.

Greg Cahill

FOR THE past five years, the ambitiously progressive folk singer and indie rock hero Sufjan Stevens has been trickling out a steady stream of Christmas songs, 42 of which have been recently compiled into a five-CD box set, simply titled Songs for Christmas. Packaged as a singalong set, Songs for Christmas includes chord charts, lyrics, stickers and other adorable shlock, none of which diminishes the singular quality of this unique Christmas set. His distinctive banjo-on-symphony style of odes to the Midwest turns out to be an ideal medium for tidings of yule, meaning that Sufjan fans can painlessly shuffle any of his Christmas songs in with the rest of his oeuvre, and anyone else who quickly tires of typical holiday cheer-filled music can enjoy a palatable, folksy alternative. No send-ups here, just spots of quirky glee and a stockingful of earnestness that's almost embarrassingly successful.

Mike Connor

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