"Twas the Night Before Hanukkah," various artists (The Idelsohn Society)

This came out in 2012, and it's an interesting bit of historical analysis cast as a double-disc set in which one disc is Hanukkah and the other is Christmas. The Idelsohn Society is a volunteer historical group that studies Jewish history via music, and they've done a very nice job of presenting it, although the heavy lifting was done in the extensive annotation, which includes an essay by Greil Marcus among others. There aren't any big surprises in the song selections, which cut across all pop genres on the Christmas disc, and of course every Christmas song was performed and written by Jewish artists. The Hanukkah disc has very little pop sensibility, although Woody Guthrie's "Hanukkah Dance" is here as well as Don McLean's "Dreidel," the latter reprised by Luther Dickinson, Jeremiah Lockwood and Ethan Miller in an almost soundalike arrangement for some reason. Most of the rest is more traditional Hanukkah music. The Christmas disc has very little rock, but they did manage to get the Ramones and Bob Dylan in, and Lou Reed delivers a spoken holiday greeting. Theo Bikel performs the folky "Sweetest Dreams Be Thine" and a comedy piece "The Problem" directly addresses the competition between the two holidays. The rest is old-school pop music by Mel Torme, Dinah Shore, Benny Goodman, Danny Kaye, Eddie Cantor, Eddie Fisher, The Ames Brothers, Mitch Miller and that noted klezmer band Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. I bring this to your attention not because it provides a source for your mix discs, but because it's an interesting look at the two holidays together. (Although in 2013 Hanukkah actually starts on Thanksgiving....) The art links to an Amazon download, but you may wish to check the society's site if you're interested in all the annotation or the hardcopy version.