It's no secret that I enjoy off-beat music, and when it comes to Christmas carols, I enjoy an array of songs. You might even say I have an eclectic taste in holiday music. Mixed into the 12 or so hours of Christmas music on my iPod, I have everything from Fall Out Boy to The King Singers, Brandi Carlile to 98 Degrees.

Here are a couple of my favorite Alternative Christmas songs:

"Winter Wonderland" by Phantom Planet
"Snowfall Music" by Carbon Leaf
"I Won't Be Home for Christmas" by Blink 182
"Oi to the World" by No Doubt
"Christmas Only Comes Once a Year" by MxPx
"All I Want for Christmas Is You" by My Chemical Romance
"Yule Shoot Your Eye Out" by Fall Out Boy
"Alone This Holiday" by The Used
"Let Me Sleep" by Pearl Jam
"Ex-Miss" by A New Found Glory

And my new favorite CD is Let It Snow Baby...Let It Reindeer by Relient K. Well, this CD has been out for a couple of years now, but I just discovered it last week and I can't stop listening to it.

What are some of your favorite holiday tunes?

Because most of our family still lives in the Chicago area, there are a lot of extended family gatherings around the holidays. But when all of us kids started moving away from home, my mother began to insist on having at least one dinner--just the five of us--around Christmas.

Thus was born Christmas Adam, or the night before Christmas Eve.

It's really a no-frills holiday tradition filled with non-traditions. We eat some food, tell some jokes and make Mom wonder how all of us ended up with our dad's sense of humor. The dinner fare is always different, and sometimes we do it at my sister's house rather than my parents. Dad gets excited about the bubble lights on the tree, and Mom cries either because we're all together or because someone is missing.

Oh, yes, and we watch While You Were Sleeping. And the three of us kids spend the night together curled up on my sister's bed talking--even when we all lived together, it was always my sister's room.

P.S. I changed the title of my novel from a boring working title to a title I actually like. Thanks Melissa and Tom for the help!

The other night I was talking to my sister about all the great Christmas movies we used to watch when we were kids, like One Magic Christmas starring Mary Steenburgen. And then my friends over at the PBS Booklights blog mentioned The Lump of Coal by Lemony Snicket, a short story I read and loved a few years ago. So that got me thinking about some of my favorite holiday stories from years gone by.

You really can't go wrong with a classic, and you can't be any more classic the poem by Clement Clarke Moore "A Visit from St. Nicholas." It has been re-told everywhich way, from Tim Burton's ghoulish masterpiece to the Cajun version I was interoduced to while living in Louisiana years ago. But it is the version of the poem I had as a child that stands out in my mind more than any other.

When I was really little, we had this pop-up version of The Night before Christmas illustrated by Michael Hague. Because it was the only pop-up book we had, it would get read all year long. We read it so often I had it memorized from the time I was about four, and to this day I can still say the poem verbatim.

As mentioned above, I am a sucker for family Christmas movies. I cried like a baby the first time I saw The Family Stone on a plane trip from Salt Lake to New York, and nothing gets me laughing like While You Were Sleeping. But my very favorite Christmas movie isn't really a Christmas movie at all.

When I sit down to watch Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis, I know it's Christmas. Because I have missed a few Christmases with my family, the song Esther sings to her little sister Tootie about Christmas being more about who you have loved than where you are has a special meaning to me.

One of my best memories from high school is the Christmas play I was in. It was a modern retelling of A Christmas Carol in which Scrooge was a self-centered rock star bent on driving himself to an early, lonely grave complete with the dreadlock-sporting ghost of Bob Marley and a tofu turkey for the hippy Cratchits. I really wish I could remember the name of the play, but it was too long ago and I can't find it in my old journals either. Oh well.

I didn't have a big part, but I did have this really dramatic fainting scene at the beginning when the kid who was supposed to catch me wasn't paying attention and I hit my head on the stage. I don't blame him, really. I tend to fall and hit my head a lot--I've even knocked myself out a couple of times. But getting back to the topic at hand...

I LOVE Christmas music. Seriously, I have about 12 hours worth of Christmas music on my iPod. Everything from the King Singers to Fall Out Boy. And all of that music tells a different story of Christmas, whether it's a depressing story of love lost and loneliness, or a song totally focused of the miracle of a baby born in a stable.

To me, one of the most beautiful hymns of the season is It Came Upon a Midnight Clear. That song encompasses everything meaningful about the season. It speaks of tradition and peace, past and present, hope and fulfillment. The imagery is also so moving: "Still thru the cloven skies they come / With peaceful wings unfurled."

There is something so distinct about the stories written about Christmas. This is the time of year when everyone suspends their disbelief for just a moment and believes that magic and miracles and goodness really does exist in the world. We stretch our imagination and make ourselves a little vulnerable to feeling the spirit of Christmas, no matter if we believe in Christ or not.

And new stories of Christmas are still being created every year. Snowmen at Night by Mark and Caralyn Buehner is the perfect example of this.

What are some of your favorite Christmas stories? Are they books or songs or maybe even memories? Maybe it's a story a parent read to you or something you discovered one Christmas when you were far from home. But in this season of glad tides, I hope you are able to find joy and happiness in all your Christmas stories.

1. I don't have to experience another Midwest Winter. Right now, in my hometown, it is cold and snowy. But in the DC area, it is ten degrees warmer and the wind-chill is almost twenty degrees higher. We might get a little snow here, but I won't have to deal with shoveling and snowdrifts and falling icicles and black ice like I would in Chicago or Idaho or Salt Lake City.

2. Though many of the indie bookstores in my area have closed, one just opened! I'm excited to visit Hooray for Book! to see what they have to offer. And I'll be visiting many of the other indie bookstores in DC in the coming weeks.

3. I am living with two of my favorite people again. Celeste and Corinna were my roommates in college and just happened to have an empty room in their apartment right when I was looking for one. They are tons of fun and both have a passion for YA and children's lit. We have already started trading books and recommendations--even Celeste's boyfriend Kevin is getting in on the book-fun.

4. There are an over-abundance or great Asian restaurants in this area. I can find great Korean, Indian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese...The list could go on forever. I LOVE Asian foods and am excited to be around so many of them.

5. You can do DC on a budget any day. Because so many of the sites in DC are federally funded, I can visit great art, historic sites, gardens, all for free. I know it is kind of nerdy to admit, but I love spending the day wandering museums and learning about interesting things.

6. Some great musicians frequent DC. I know, more of them go to Chicago and the music scene in SLC is more intimate, but there is Ford's Theater, the Kennedy Center, music halls, jazz clubs and so much more right on my doorstep.

7. My brother has talked about coming to visit me for New Year's, my sister is planning a trip out here for the Inauguration, my dad will be here for a conference in March and my mom is visiting for Independence Day. We might not all be together this holiday season, but we'll all see each other again soon. And I'll get to share with each of them in the coming months.