My sister Peg gets Christmas Socks every year because....because I love her and that is what we do.  These are the Christmas Socks 2010 and are knit up from yarn that I originally purchased from KnitPicks.  It is Stroll sock yarn in Grasshopper which is a discontinued color.  No worries though since I overdyed it anyway.  If you want to make your own pair just match up colors in your stash to get the shades you like, or overdye as I did to create the shades you like.  You'll need a full skein (100 grams - 462 yards) of the background color although you'll have plenty of leftover.  And then you'll need about 100 yards of each of the three pattern colors.
The pattern is from Folk Socks which is also available from KnitPicks.  These are the Mamluke Socks on page 76 which Nancy Bush has done in blue and white.  I changed the heel and the sole of the foot but kept the toe pattern which is extremely clever and will be showing up on the toes of future socks.These FairIsle patterns really take off and become something wonderful when you use hand dyed yarns.  If you just aren't ready to dye your own there are many wonderful hand dyers out there.  Three 100 gram skeins of hand dyed sock yarn will make you three pairs of these socks handily, with bits left over for your stash -- enough for at least one more pair.
Down below are The Golden Christmas Socks which I gave to my sister in 2009.  I spun up the yarn from a superwash merino/cashmere/nylon roving from portfiber and there is no way that I can technologically convey to you the wondrous feeling of merino/cashmere handspun and hand knit wonderfulness that the socks possess in person.  It is only because of my great love for Peg, and the complete lack of anything yellow in both my own and my daughter's wardrobe that I was able to wrest them from our grasping hands and place them on my sister's feet.  And because my sister is nobody's fool she retained them on her feet and wore them continuously all afternoon until we had safely left the premises.

Here is another picture of the socks from the side.  The pattern for these socks can be found in A Gathering of Lace by Meg Swanson and it is a great pattern that I have knit up at least a dozen times.  I have, of course, doctored it a bit in terms of the back of the heel and the toe closing but it is substantially just as it was written.  This book can be purchased at Knitpicks here and is a great compilation of lace objects by a variety of designers.