Christmas

With five discs and 100 tracks, this holiday set is expansive and interesting. Some of the sides will be familiar to nearly everyone – classics like Bing Crosby's version of “White Christmas” and Perry Como's “Winter Wonderland” pop up in the stores and all over the radio dial during the season’s festivities – but other selections here are fairly rare and give things a depth that a lot of holiday collections don’t reach…

In 2004, Trans-Siberian Orchestra finished their "Christmas trilogy" with the massive – some would say ponderous – The Lost Christmas Eve. Wasting none of the holiday season's precious shopping time, the Christmas Trilogy box set landed two weeks after that album, giving the band's loyal fan base a set to give – some would say inflict – to their friends. Then again, maybe they'll just want to hold on to the set since there's a DVD with appearances by Jewel and Michael Crawford and the lavishly illustrated booklet includes all the lyrics and background stories…

The Kylie experience has become so all-encompassing it's hard to believe that 2015's Kylie Christmas is her first holiday album. She and her team do it right, providing a varied and diverse selection of tracks and moods…

After an eight-year lay-off from the recording studio, the Smithereens released two albums in 2007. However, it doesn't bode well for their creative process that the first of those albums was comprised entirely of Beatles covers, and the second was a Christmas disc. However, Christmas with the Smithereens at least features three original tunes (which is three more than Meet the Smithereens!), and as rock & roll Christmas albums go, this is good fun and admirably eclectic…

In case you've lost track (or were never keeping track), this is Johnny Mathis' sixth newly recorded Christmas album following Merry Christmas (1958), The Sound of Christmas (1963), Give Me Your Love for Christmas (1969), For Christmas (1984), and Christmas Eve With Johnny Mathis (1986)…

Elton John's Christmas Party is a Christmas-themed compilation album from British singer-songwriter Elton John. It features his 1973 Christmas single, "Step into Christmas", and a new duet with Joss Stone, "Calling It Christmas". According to John's introduction in the liner notes, as opposed to doing an album of his versions of already famous songs, he chose to do a compilation with some of his favorite holiday songs by other artists…

The Ghosts of Christmas Eve was a live show conceived for television by Trans-Siberian Orchestra, separate from their Christmas Trilogy of recordings, which they were two-thirds of the way through at the time. It aired in on the short-lived Fox Family network in 1999 with a cast that included Ossie Davis, Michael Crawford, and Jewel…