Consider the text accompanying The Waitresses' "Christmas Wrapping" (remembering, of course, that this is written on the inside of the CD's insert): "Don't miss this one this year. Chris Butler's ode to a bad Christmas with a very happy ending at an all night grocery." What? Why are they trying to "sell" me on listening to this song? I already got the damn album. And the second sentence that attempts to serve as a "Cliff's Notes" version of the song isn't even a complete sentence!

As I listened through each successive disc, I came to realize that the volumes of NOW That's What I Call Christmas! get worse with each successive release, showing less and less thought and effort being put into each set. Volume 1 clearly has the biggest "good" to "bad" Christmas music ratio, and is the only volume I would consider recommending.

With Volume 2, prepare to be hitting the "skip" button more times than not, and the useful and interesting text associated with each song gives way to inane marketing tripe. Volume 3 is barely even worth dissecting, as there's absolutely no extra text in the liner notes at all, the breakdown of songs doesn't fully embrace the whole "Now" and "Then" distinctions as the songs appear to be arranged haphazardly across both discs, and the mix of music itself offers up only a handful of decent tracks while the rest sounds like bottom-of-the-barrel, D-grade Christmas songs. Apparently they didn't even bother to double-check which songs they'd already included in other volumes, as The Beach Boys' "Little Saint Nick" appears in both Volume 1 and 3.

Now, like I stated earlier, everyone's got different taste in Christmas music, so I can understand that some folks may enjoy tracks like Jimmy Buffet's take on "Jingle Bells" or Relient K's "12 Days of Christmas," while, personally, listening to them made me want to vomit in my stocking and cram a fistful of tinsel in each ear. But what I can't comprehend is how anyone could be so musically eclectic in their tastes as to be able to enjoy all or even most of what these NOW mixes offer up.

It seems to me it would have made more sense to break up each "Now" and "Then" discs into separate releases, as they'll better serve different crowds. The idea of, "let's dump something from every genre onto one release; that way we're sure to get more people to buy our CDs!" just doesn't cut it with me. It reminds me of a great Bill Cosby quote: "the key to failure is to try to please everyone."

Is putting such a wide range of Christmas music into one, then two, then three very eclectic CD collections an interesting idea? Sure it is. Is it a good idea? Probably not.