Here's a Disney Christmas stocking filled with a few gems, a bunch of okay little items, and a couple lumps of coal. Disney's Very Merry Christmas Sing Along Songs is a collection of 21 traditional Christmas songs accompanied by new and classic Disney animation. If you love Disney and Christmas, you'll find that the two go together reasonably well on this disc—but if you're an animation purist and really put your critical eye to this presentation, you'll see that Disney has cut more than a few corners and applied the same deft touch that they use on their direct-to-video sequels. In other words, this ain't up to the standards of their theatrical fare, but there are some diverting moments.

The 21 songs are interwoven with the help of some warm, Christmasy narration by Roscoe Lee Brown, who talks all squishily about the holidays and warm fires and stuff, providing cute little introductions to each tune. You've probably heard all of these songs on the radio at Christmas time: They're original recordings from such artists as Gene Autry, Bing Crosby, and so on. That's a nice touch. So is the inclusion of not only 10 newly animated short films (some really short at just a minute or two) but also some classic footage—from seemingly the very beginning of Disney animation. So, the disc offers many different styles and periods of Disney animation.

What bugged me about a few of these short subjects is that some of the footage seems clumsily recycled and edited. Even in shorts where the characters are supposed to be singing a given song, their mouths aren't shown or the lyrics don't seem to quite match the lip movements. Also, a big drawback is that you can't remove the huge karaoke-style subtitles that are plastered across the screen for each song—and many of these obnoxious subtitles appear too late, so that you can't prepare for the next lyric.

Here's the song list, and the Disney characters represented. The first four and the final six are newly created shorts.

1) "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas"—Donald and his nephews.
2) "Winnie the Pooh's Jingle Bells"—Pooh and friends.
3) "Toyland"—Minnie and Mickey Mouse.
4) "All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth"—Goofy and son.
5) "Deck the Halls"—Mickey, Pluto, Chipmunks.
6) "Jingle Bells"—Donald briefly, then unknown.
7) "Joy to the World"—Snowflake fairies, great animation!
8) "Up on the Housetop"—Old-style Santa!
9) "Let It Snow"—Awkward compilation of characters.
10) "Sleigh Ride"—Mickey and Scrooge, awkwardly edited.
11) "Parade of the Wooden Soldiers"—Toy soldiers.
12) "Winter Wonderland"—Old-style Donald!
13) "Here Comes Santa Claus"—Live footage of a Disneyland parade.
14) "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer"—An old Rudolph cartoon.
15) "Silent Night"—Old animation that will bore you and your kids.
16) "Seasons of Giving"—Pooh and friends.
17) "As Long as There's Christmas"—Belle from Beauty and the Beast.
18) "Jingle Bell Rock"—Mickey and Minnie.
19) "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree"—Pooh and friends.
20) "White Christmas"—A bunch of characters from many movies. See if you can spot 'em.
21) "The Best Christmas of All"—More of the "Spot the Characters" approach.

Buena Vista presents Disney's Very Merry Christmas Sing Along Songs in an accurate 1.33:1 transfer that varies in quality from song to song. We have many different sources here, and in general the new stuff fares best, with great colors, detail, and depth. The older stuff suffers accordingly with its age. Some of the colors in these shorts are vivid, whereas others are washed out. But your children won't mind the differences in quality one bit. In general, this presentation gets the job done quite nicely.

The Dolby Digital 2.0 track offers rich depth, nice bass, and very clear singing. This is a fine sound presentation, given the varying sources.

The extras are underwhelming. You get a Words of the Season: Vocabulary Game that will insult even your youngest child. You get a dumb Very Merry Musical Game. And finally, the disc offers a mildly amusing Create-A-Card Activity, in which your child can create a virtual card for someone she loves.

This Disney DVD is a mildly entertaining hour that you can spend with your kids at Christmas time. The notion of putting classic holiday songs to Disney animation is fantastic, but this presentation stumbles a bit by cutting corners. The image and sound are passable, but the extras are just this side of awful.