The repeating loop of music on the store's overhead speakers is more likely to make them postal than passive. But the Web offers enough free albums that are exceptional, unique and utterly bizarre (like a rare "Star Wars" holiday album supposedly selling for $130 on eBay) to occupy the ears for many Decembers to come.

One site alone, Bongobells, offers about 50 mostly out-of-circulation albums, including the "Star Wars" disc and nearly all those in the mini-reviews below. Downloading them here and at some other sites is a minor pain (more below), but others provide decent starter collections almost hassle-free. Among them is Jeffco Christmas Downloads, where the other albums reviewed below can be found.

Many of the albums are discontinued, colossal commercial failures and other projects doomed to obscurity before digital capturing allowed them to be elevated to cult-like status. Generally the album's title and lead performer(s) are about all the information available without exhaustive research, but the sites provide enough description for listeners to know what they're getting before committing bandwidth to them. All of the songs are in unprotected MP3 format, but many are also likely in a legal "grey" area at best. But since eBay seems to be about the only way to get the actual CDs, you probably aren't starving anybody out of their Christmas dinner money.

The annoyance at Bongobells and some sites is sitting through a minute-long nag screen before downloading the album, then waiting about an hour before being allowed to access the next one. It costs about $14 for a month of unlimited instant downloads, which really isn't a bad one-time deal. More favorably, each album—paid or free—comes as a complete ZIP file, freeing listeners from having to download them a song at a time.

Keep in mind, this is only a glimpse of two sites and not necessarily the best they have (the double-CD Nomad Christmas being one of several world music albums at Bongobells that seem highly worthwhile based on a quick audition).

Beyond that, I have hundreds of free holiday albums and similar-size collections from other sites around the world. Recent places I've visited for international files include a compilation of various performers at mamalisa.com and two large collections of sacred and choral music from the Vatican. A search for "Christmas" at the Internet Archive will turn up hundreds of concerts and public domain albums. Songramp has a huge database of musicians offering jazz and other holiday works; some offer one song, others several.

Finding more is ridiculously easy with a Google search for "Christmas," "MP3," "free" and "jazz"—assuming one wants to limit results to that genre. For many religious organizations, performing arts groups and others it's a goodwill/promotional offering, so freebies are more available than almost any other format. Also, don't limit the search to Christmas—some of my most frequently played December albums celebrate Kwanzaa and there's no shortage of cool Klezmer getting more than its usual share of play this time of year.

To the mini-reviews:

Santa Claus Is Canadian
Various Artists

Canada, being the first country to extend its border to the North Pole, ought to know its Christmas carols. The fact U.S. retailers wouldn't touch this 1981 album shouldn't deter listeners from what's really a pleasant multi-artist project.

The country simply is ill-suited for the aggressiveness of today's world—thanks to global warming their claim to the Pole is being challenged by a bunch of nations wanting shipping routes and oil drilling in the thawing ice. When a plane crashed there, the best the Canadians could do was slap a ticket on the pilot for littering.

So the Hallmark sweetness of this 13-song collection is a lot less saccharine than your typical $3 bargain-bin holiday CD.

Most of the songs feature choruses slightly more mature than Whoville town square, with Bing Crosby-era orchestration to match, although oddly they grate less than you'd think. Maybe it's because there's enough individual-oriented songs mixed in, such as a fairly soulful female gospel presence on "Christmas Is For Children," another woman's lilting vocals and the swing-era horns of "Images Of Christmas," and the male-female duet on "Old Fashioned Christmas."

There's some lameness such as "Christmas Samba," which is stripped of virtually all ethnic presence sounds like a white-bred relic from "The Lawrence Welk Show."

Similar: A majority of the 13 albums at the Jeffco site appear to be by Canadian artists, including Christmas Is For Children, Christmas Is My Love and It's Christmas Day.

A Drummer Boy's Christmas
Eric Darken