A list to mix your own holiday sound

Crazy for Christmas is the title of the new album by insouciant swingers Dan Hicks & the Hot Licks, which is my favorite single-artist holiday collection of 2010, just ahead of Shelby Lynne's winningly morose Merry Christmas.

But "crazy for Christmas" is also an apt way to describe the pop world's attitude toward holiday music-making these days. Winter-warming collections by Josh Groban and Andrea Bocelli have been mega-sellers in recent years, and there are plenty of mainstream options out there this season.

Susan Boyle's The Gift currently tops the Billboard 200 album chart - and other choices range from the cast of Glee (No. 3) to 10-year-old classical crossover phenom Jackie Evancho's EP O Holy Night (No. 5) to Mariah Carey, whose second all-holiday set, Merry Christmas II You, is No. 18. (Italian tenor Bocelli's My Christmas came out in 2009, but it's currently holding down the No. 11 spot.)

The big sellers aren't the only ones positioning themselves under the mistletoe, though. It has been the season to spread cheer going back to the Beatles' Christmas messages in the 1960s, and the alacrity of the Internet allows acts to give away - or sell, on iTunes - instant stocking-stuffers.

Retail outlets attempting to fill the void created by the collapse of chain music stores are heavily into the point-of-purchase Christmas-compilation business, too. The playlist below includes songs culled from collections issued by Starbucks, Target, Cracker Barrel, and even the U.S. Postal Service.

What all this adds up to is A Christmas Cornucopia, to borrow the title of Eurythmics singer Annie Lennox's serious-minded set. It used to require a good deal of scouring to put together a respectably fresh, off-the-beaten-path, annual Christmas mix. Now, the challenge is what to leave off in hopes of keeping the mirth-making soundtrack to a reasonable duration.

So on the list that follows, Coldplay's "Christmas Lights" didn't make the cut, and neither did Frightened Rabbit's "It's Christmas So We'll Stop" or Jessica Simpson and Willie Nelson's ill-advised "Merry Christmas Baby."

The songs that did make it had to be new or rereleased this year. So you'll find Rihanna and Frank Sinatra under this particular tree. And, no, Virginia, there will be no "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" this year.