I love the day after Thanksgiving, because it's the day I can officially start listening to holiday songs.

Now, by December 26, I'll be sick of them all, but at this point I haven't heard them for almost a whole year!

Oprah's giving away some Christmas mp3s, if they're your style:

Have a Thrifty Holiday: Holiday Hits 2008

It's traditional favorites by Harry Connick Jr., Amy Grant, Aretha Franklin, Tony Bennett, Faith Hill, and some people I haven't heard of but presumably are famous if Oprah knows of them. The songs are up for only a couple days, so download 'em while you can, along with the cover and label PDFs.

Another great find I've discovered for Christmas music is the local library system. If yours is like mine, you can search online by subject and sort by audio CD, so it's easy to find a list of all holiday CDs and place holds on the ones that appeal to you.

Now, I'm a little late at telling you about this if you haven't thought of it before, because the most popular CDs are already going to be on hold through the end of the year. But, leave yourself on hold, and go ahead and get the CDs when they come to you in January or February. I know you won't want to listen to them then, but give them a sample and rip the songs you like and save them in a holiday folder on your iTunes or iPod or whatever you have that doesn't start with a little i.

Then they'll be all ready for next Christmas, and will surprise you with how fresh and new they sound when they start playing in your holiday shuffle.

If you have any PepsiStuff points from drinking too much diet cola (ahem...), Amazon has alerted me that they will expire at the end of the year. You can use just 5 points for each mp3 download, so use up any by getting your favorite songs. Maybe whatever's still on perpetual hold at the library!

Happy holiday listening!