Album: Joey & Rory, A Farmhouse Christmas (Sugar Hill)

A kind of pathological localism lies at the heart of the American ideal of Christmas, and they don't get any more local than Joey and Rory, a husband and wife duo from Tennessee.

A Farmhouse Christmas is what you get when Nashville gets its hands on Santa, the baby Jesus and a Good Ol' Married Couple in his'n'hers dungarees. Plus Merle Haggard. Oooh, the warm feeling. They're talented, too, and not above a spot of irreverence to leaven the gloop.