Recipe for the Perfect Christmas Album 2011

• First, go to Amazon and buy "The Hotel Café Presents . . . Winter Songs" for $7.99.  
• Then buy "This Warm December: A Brushfire Holiday Volume 1" for $5.00.  
• Listen to all the songs and delete the annoying ones (each album has a few, I believe, but SO many of them are awesome).
• What's remaining should be the crème de la crème.  We tried to be picky with our playlist.  Now shuffle to taste.
• Voilà!  Enjoy the perfection.  Trust me.  It will be the best $12.99 you spend this December.

Here's our playlist if you want to copy us (see?  An all-star lineup):

1. Santa Claus is Coming to Town (Mason Jennings)*
2. Sleigh Ride (KT Tunstall)
3. No Christmas For Me (Zee Avi)*
4. The Christmas Song (Catherine Feeny)
5. Someday at Christmas (Jack Johnson)*
6. Auld Lang Syne (Buddy)
7. All My Bells are Ringing (Lenka)
8. The Man in the Santa Suit (Neil Halstead)*
9. Frosty the Snowman (Fiona Apple)
10. Silent Night (Priscilla Ahn)
11. Christmas (Rogue Wave)
12. Mistletoe (Colbie Caillat)
13. Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer (Jack Johnson)
14. Silent Night (Zach Gill)
15. The Heartache Can Wait (Brandi Carlile)*
16. Winter Song (Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson)*

* = listen to samples of these if you need convincing

Need more Christmas music ideas?  Go here to read Ben's Christmas Music Review on his Book List Blog. He reviewed 14 albums in our collection.  There's some good stuff there too!