Christmas Alone

Joy to the world? Whatever. Here we celebrate the solitary pleasures of seasonal humbug, even if that means crying into our egg-nog with Mick Jagger, Mariah Carey, and Elvis. Emmy the Great and Lightspeed Champion keep the holiday on a downer with their version of John Prine's "Christmas In Prison" while alt-rockers My Morning Jacket and Eels bring a leftfield perspective that dovetails nicely with the holiday alienation many of us feel. Who needs a partridge in a pear tree anyway? Leif Garrett contemplates a sober Christmas with dread, in Next Steps.

Global warming has seen off the snow, cynical commercialism has kicked good will in the nuts, every carol singer thinks they can win Pop Idol — so it's time to retreat into our hermetically sealed shell of melodic miserablism, along with Leif Garrett & the Crush Ups ("Betty Ford for Christmas"), a morose Baby Bird (with the gorgeous and surprisingly uplifting "Planecrash Xmas"), and Dean Martin, who soaks "The Christmas Blues" in Martini. Join him for a glass or two. The Supremes offer you a lachrymose Xmas, in Deep Cuts.

Crank up your estrangement from Yuletide cheer right here, with some moody punk balladry from the Vibrators ("I Miss You Most At Christmas") and a cold blast of Yamaha-keyboard comedy from John Shuttleworth ("The Christmas Orphan"). With such a rich panoply of holiday maladies — from broken hearts in the Supremes' "Just a Lonely Christmas" to interpersonal dysfunction in the Therapy Sisters' "Codependent Christmas" — you're virtually guaranteed a perfect bummer of a Christmas.

Let's face it: for every child who gets a pillowcase full of gifts from Santa, there's one that gets a lump of anthracite (that's coal, although Santa is more likely to deliver bituminous . . . but we digress). And for all you budding Scrooges out there, let your malcontent flag fly! These tunes are the perfect antidote to the smiley joy-spreaders in your social circle who think Xmas is all about kittens and mittens. Bah, humbug, and stick it right up your atrociously patterned jumper.