TOP HOLIDAY MOMENTS IN POP
Staff picks of favourite Yuletide tunes, TV and films
They’re the holiday moments that keep on giving, the songs, movies, TV specials and books we keep going back to, December after December. We’ve made our list and checked it twice, now here’s our roundup of great Christmas pop culture offerings, with YouTube links.
YouTube Lights House Wizards in Winter
My little sister one year showed the family this YouTube video of an over-thetop Christmas lights display timed to the holiday power chords of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and we laughed until we cried. Seriously, who has the kind of time and energy to create such a monstrosity? It’s totally possible we were high on something sugary, but that’s not the point. We still get a kick out of it, even though there are imitators everywhere these days.
— Gwendolyn Richards
https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=rmgf60CI_ks
Do They Know It’s Christmas?
The need (raising money to help famine victims in Africa) was great, but the 1984 gathering of British rock royalty in London to make Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas also remains a fascinating time capsule of ’80s music (and hair!) They were all there: Organizers Bob Geldof and Midge Ure, Bono and Adam Clayton from U2, Paul McCartney, Phil Collins, David Bowie, Sting, Boy George, George Michael, the guys from Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet in all their swooping locks and baggy-sweatered glory, but also looking casual, like they were out for an afternoon pint at their local. The song led to copycats from USA for Africa (We Are The World) and Canada’s Northern Lights (Tears Are Not Enough).
— Peter Glenn Youtube: http:// www.youtube.com/ watch?v=to652Gy9blI
Mario Lanza: Christmas Hymns and Carols
A Hollywood leading man and a fantastic tenor, Mario Lanza lived large and died young in 1959 at age 38, leaving a legacy in opera, radio, movies and records through the late ’40s and ’50s. His traditional takes on Christmas hymns like The First Noel, Away in a Manger, Joy to the World, O Christmas Tree and We Three Kings were immortalized on the holiday album Christmas Hymns and Carols, released in 1963. The record also, curiously, included the secular Guardian Angel, arranged by Harpo Marx.
— Peter Glenn Youtube: http:// www.youtube.com/ watch?v=1h2yGyj5N8Q
A Christmas Story
For my family, it just wouldn’t be Christmas if you didn’t hear that heartwarming phrase, “You’ll shoot your eye out” at some point during the holidays.
I’m not sure how or when we started watching this 1983 family classic, but I still think it’s one of the best Christmas films out there. It’s funny and clever (without being too sappy) and it really captures the feeling of being a kid and desperately wanting that one special thing for Christmas — even if it will take your eye out.
— Christina Kunz http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=uvMLfSQrHKE
Sid and Nancy
Not a Christmas movie? Bah. The story of punk rock icons Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen is a love story.
The movie has lots of good Christmasy images; remember Nancy Spungen showing up at the hospital with a cart full of Christmas gear to spring a strung-out Sid? Unfortunately it doesn’t have a happy Christmas ending, but it does have a good soundtrack.
— Shelley Wallis http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=hZp3meyWVm0
Winnie the Pooh and Christmas Too
If you read the original A.A. Milne Winnie the Pooh stories, there’s a childlike charm in the writing that sweetly delivers some timeless themes for readers of all ages. Those messages haven’t always made it into the Disney movie and TV adaptations of the Pooh stories, but this 1991 Christmas TV special delivers with charm to spare.
— Yvonne Jeffery http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=v_I3NTDrsD8
Mele Kalikimaka by Don Ho (or Bing Crosby, both are fine)
I used to like the ironic charm of this quaint Hawaiian Christmas song, thanks to the movie Christmas Vacation when the song plays as Clark W. Griswold gazes out his back window imagining the swimming pool he will never be able to afford. Now, as a struggling parent like poor old Clark, the song strikes longing in me for the things we wish for our children but will never be able to give them. Like girls in bikinis around a backyard pool in Hawaii.
— Tom Babin http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=NWN5Chp1Hyg
Die Hard
Not only is it one of the best action movies of all time (seriously, watch it again. It’s still good), Die Hard is set at Christmas-time and is full of nice holiday messages. Such as family commitments, especially to your estranged wife while under siege by gunmen.
The importance of family, like avenging the death of your blond German superthief brother killed by a wisecracking off-duty cop. Ho ho ho.
— Tom Babin http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=-qxBXm7ZUTM
Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
The best thing about The Boss’s rock ’n’ roll take on the holiday classic is how much fun the man has with it. I’ve been lucky enough to see him perform it twice in concert, and he sells it to the nosebleeds as hard as he did on that track from 1975 that gets trotted out every year. Back then, he was still young and wild young and doing the E street shuffle, but age hasn’t dimmed his enthusiasm for the tune. And when the Big Man lent his bass to “better be good for goodness sake,” you checked yourself right quick to make sure you weren’t on the naughty list.
—Ruth Myles
http://youtu.be/6CIebZ4RtgY
Pretty Paper by Willie Nelson
What would the season be without a few tears? We need a touch of the maudlin to remind us what the season is about (or to commiserate with if all our perfect plans have gone up like the Shaw log).
Willie Nelson wrote this quiet tear-jerker back in 1963 about a man in Fort Worth Texas who would sell pencils to passersby on the street, adding seasonal wrapping paper and ribbons comes Christmas-time. Roy Orbison recorded it first, then Nelson did as well for his 1979 Christmas album.
“There he sits all alone on the sidewalk/Hoping that you won’t pass him by/Should you stop better not much too busy/Better hurry, my, how time does fly ...” Listen to the song again now that you know the backstory. And if you don’t shed a drop or two — or at the very least tear up — then your heart, dear reader is two sizes too small.
—Ruth Myles
http://youtu.be/MqNFdFbo8cA
Patton Oswalt’s Christmas Shoes and Chipmunks Christmas standup
One of the finest and funniest standup comic minds of the past decade — second, perhaps, only to Louis CK and neck and neck with David Cross — Oswalt has a couple of absolutely brilliant seasonally themed bits on Christmas music that won’t put you in the spirit, per se, but will probably get you goonier than an entire bowl of rum nog. The first is the best, where the comedian relates his thoughts on the Christian rock band New Song’s atrociously maudlin and creepy tune Christmas Shoes. Hearing him dissect it line by line is like watching slomo National Geographic footage of a gimped-up zebra being taken down by a lion (wearing a Santa hat, natch) — brutal and bloody hilarious. Watching the YouTube clip where it’s been animated makes it that much more enjoyable.
— Mike Bell http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=iq10bz3PxyY http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=7smyIP7TplM
Deja Voodoo’s Bugs for Christmas
If you can track down this little gem from Montreal’s late, lamented ‘sludgeabilly’ duo of Deja Voodoo, do. It appears on their 1985 classic Too Cool To Live, Too Smart To Die album which was released on guitarist-singer Gerard van Herk and drummer Tony Dewald’s own cult label Og Music.
That album also includes the timeless ditties Cheese and Crackers, Bo Diddley’s Cat and The House of Dr. Stimuli, but it’s the fast ’n’ furious 48-second Bugs that somehow still resonates today, probably just for the lines, “I don’t care what people say, bugs for Christmas make my day,” and the oft-repeated chorus of “Bugs for Christmas, Santa bring me some.” While the album is proudly in my collection, the only place one can find it online is on some Russian website that I honestly can’t guarantee won’t steal your identity. If you want to take that chance, the link is included, with many other DV tunes there as well.
— Mike Bell
myzlo.info/poisk/deja voodoo
Scrooged
Bill Murray. Christmas. Nuff said.
— Mike Bell https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=3kX6rf9uw7w