There are plenty of things to be ashamed of when taking stock of the year: past support for the war in Iraq, not caring about dirty instant messages to congressional pages, clicking on those photos of Britney’s hoo-ha. Loving Christmas music doesn’t have to be one of those things-you just need to look at each season’s yuletide offerings with a critical eye, if only to make sure you keep mistletoe where it can’t hurt you.

If anyone could scrub Christmas of its pagan roots, it’s a pair of tween-pop evolution skeptics. The arrangements are pathologically cute, but the Michalka gals’ clean is so squeaky that they feel less like a possibly genetically engineered pop act than like a newly opened front in the War on the War on Christmas. The two mall-rockin’ originals