Don"t be fooled: This release does not collect the country chart"s biggest-ever holiday hits. If that was the case, then Gene Autry ("Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer") and Dolly Parton ("Hard-Candy Christmas") would have been included. What we get instead, though, is a swell, 10-song sampler of post-war country, Yuletide division, with a special focus on 1949 when both Eddy Arnold and Ernest Tubb scored two Top Ten Xmas hits apiece. The lone 1960s entry, Buck Owens"s amazed "Santa Looked A Lot Like Daddy," is probably closest to contemporary country-rock tastes, while Tubb"s quavering but sincere "Blue Christmas"--which amazingly charted three Decembers in a row--is still as sad a slice of holiday twang as has ever been put to wax. --David Cantwell