Country music Christmas albums are often the biggest offenders of the holiday music formula: load in the maudlin, the mawkish, the over-produced, string-ridden tracks to make sure everybody knows how reverent they view the season and how important that marshmallow sentiment is this time of year. But the result is often just the opposite for discriminating listeners: after so many of these artists milk the treacle machine, nobody sounds genuine anymore and that rarefied Christmas sentiment is buried beneath layers and layers of pretty paper. That said, , featuring veterans such as Alan Jackson, George Strait, Alabama, and Reba McEntire along with up-and-comers such as Alecia Elliott, Chely Wright, and Mark Wills, fares pretty well. Toby Keith's "Christmas Rock" has some funny twists on an old rite, George Strait takes a new look at "Christmas Cookies," and only Vince Gill seems really lost in the reverence realm with a very stately reading of "O Come All Ye Faithful." A pleasant mainstream collection.

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