My annual St. Nick’s Day post. Back on November 7, the Hallmark Channel was showing about eight Christmas-themed TV movies. I’m sure this continues to this day and beyond. This does not bother me whatsoever.
A radio station in Chicago started playing holiday music even earlier than that. As long as I don’t have to actually listen to it, I just don’t care.
Thanksgiving is as late as it can be this year. This encourages retailers to offer pre-Black Friday sales as soon as the Halloween pumpkins are put away. Whatever.
It’s my opinion that people fuss WAY too much about Santa’s sleigh jumping into the turkey’s and jack-o-lantern’s lanes. In fact, I saw a cartoon somewhere depicting that. It just does not rise to an impeachable offense.
But MY seasonal music listening starts TODAY and runs to January 6, which is Three King’s Day or Russian Christmas. Here are a bunch of links, mostly from after last year’s St. Nick’s Day.
The melancholy section
I’ll Be Home for Christmas – Bing Crosby
Winter Snow · Booker T. & The MG’s. It features Isaac Hayes on the piano
The Stan Freberg section
The Night Before Christmas (1955)
Green Christmas (1958)
The Bob Dylan section
Must Be Santa
Little Drummer Boy
Twas The Night Before Christmas
The advertising section
The first ad I came across this season was Argos Christmas – The Book of Dreams (Extended Version). Arthur always has adverts, usually from New Zealand, that tend to irritate me less than American commercials; here are all of them.
More Yule
Et in Terra pax – Vivaldi and Handel. The former, which I’ve sung, is particularly moving to me.
STAR IN THE EAST – The Southern Harmony, from ROSE ENSEMBLE. I stole this from fillyjonk, but the other video in the post was no longer working, alas.
Christmas Eve with Cookie Monster
White Christmas – Julian Neel; Mr. Berlin’s song, more or less Drifters-style
Christmas Wrapping – the Waitresses. I own this song on something called vinyl.
Happy St. Nick’s Day!