It’s Christmas week for those who celebrate (and also for those who don’t, they just don’t have to pay attention to it). As such, here’s this week’s Christmas-themed playlist.

1. Darlene Love, “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”: Best. Christmas song. Ever. I will broke no arguments. It’s all downhill from here, people.
2. Calexico, “Hear the Bells”: Calexico released a Christmas album! Well, sort of. More a wintertime seasonal album with a couple of Christmas songs thrown on (including covers of Tom Petty and John Lennon). It’s Calexico. It’s good. I don’t know why the previous two sentences are both there, since they say the exact same thing.
3. Elton John, “Step Into Christmas”: When you want to make a joyful noise, Elton John is your guy.
4. Neko Case, “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis”: It starts off, “Charlie, I’m pregnant,” and I’m just gonna have to stop you there. I had nothin’ to do with it. Beautiful Tom Waits cover.
5. Run-DMC, “Christmas in Hollis”: Who doesn’t love rap songs about Christmas? Commies, that’s who.
6. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, “Christmas All Over Again”: If for nothing else than the way he pronounces “Rickenbacker” at the end.
7. Paul McCartney, “Wonderful Christmastime”: Yes, it’s a terrible song. Yes, it sounds like something McCartney wrote simply because all he had in the studio that day was a Casio keyboard. And yes, I once put together a Christmas playlist that was just this song repeated twenty times.
8. Weird Al, “Christmas at Ground Zero”: Who else but Weird Al would give us the song about post-nuclear-fallout Yuletide we all never knew we wanted?
9. The Royal Guardsmen, “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron”: Okay, so this one takes some explaining. When my brothers and I were wee little kids, we had a cassette tape that featured the Royal Guardsmen and a series of songs (yes, there’s more than one of these) about Snoopy fighting against the Red Baron in World War I. The final song in the trilogy features the Red Baron whipping out a Christmas present and wishing Snoopy a Merry Christmas.There was a second side to the tape that didn’t feature a big-nosed beagle fighting a German aerial ace, but we never listened to that side. We did wear that tape out, though.
10. Barenaked Ladies with Sarah McLachlan, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/We Three Kings”: I love this version of these two songs. This mashup is just one of the best Christmas songs out there, and it bops, my children. It bops.