Vince Guaraldi Trio "A Charlie Brown Christmas"

In the old days, we had albums . . . and we put them on for Christmas.

Maybe you don't have your albums anymore.  But here's an album to stream.

Enjoy.  Merry Christmas.


Hear the full album on Youtube.

Stephen Colbert "Another Christmas Song"

Usually around the first weekend in December we buy our Christmas tree.  We like to get it up on the earlier side, though it does become a little crusty by the time Santa actually arrives.

And bringing in the tree, means going down to the basement and hauling up the boxes of Christmas decorations.  Not only things to hang on the tree, but lights for the window, the manger scene, nutcrackers, snowglobes, a mechanical Bob Hope figurine that sings . . . and the box of Christmas DVDs.

When I was a kid, Christmas specials were an event.  You'd study the TV page that came with the Sunday paper, to see when "Charlie Brown Christmas" or "The Grinch" was going to be on.  You'd wait all day for 8pm.  And the tension would build when you'd see that old "Special Presentation" bumper, that let you know that regular programming had the night off---here comes a Christmas special.

And woe be unto you if you missed it.

If a Christmas special aired, and you weren't in front of the TV, then you missed it for the year.  It didn't repeat.  You didn't have it on Tivo.  There were no VCRs to have recorded it.  You missed your chance.

It made watching a Christmas special, an event.

Today is a different experience.

I brought that box of DVDs up from the basement 2 weeks ago.  Since then, I bet my kids have seen "The Grinch" five times already.  And "Frosty" and "Rudolph" and "Charlie Brown" and others.  Hell, it's possible that "Elmo's Christmas Countdown" has been screened daily around these parts.

My kids won't remember Christmas specials as an event.  They'll remember them as a season.

Nowhere is this more evident, than on the DVD in that box, that only I will watch.

Yeah, the kids aren't really into Stephen Colbert.  But I got his Christmas special on DVD and really get a kick out of it.

One of the most on-the-nose jabs at the holiday-special-trope is that at the end of the show, Colbert holds up a DVD copy of the show he is currently in the progress of creating, saying it's for sale and you can watch it again and again.

Of course, unlike the kids, I'll only watch it once this year, like last year.

But maybe that just makes me as old and as crusty as our Christmas tree will be by New Years . . .


Hear the song on Youtube.


See the CBS "Special Presentation" bumper on Youtube.

U2 "Blow Your House Down"

Well, it's the day after Halloween, so, in some quarters it's okay to start talking about Christmas.

I mean, for some of you, it's not appropriate to broach the subject until after you've had your Thanksgiving turkey, but c'mon, that's not realistic, if you're talking about preparing for Christmas as a shopping season.

In the world of the record industry, it has long been a tradition to shut things down when December hits. What with the flurry of the holiday, with holiday programming and other distractions, record labels recognized that December is a pretty terrible time to launch a new record project.

So if it wasn't out by November, it wasn't coming out until January.

But as we, as a culture, have started the Christmas season earlier and earlier, the label world has had to react.

Now, if the record isn't out by mid-October, then it's not coming out until next year. You just can't chance having a good record get lost in the holiday shuffle.

Sure, labels could then take a couple of months off/easy, and prepare for next year, but that's a pretty long furlough. So instead, they have really ramped up the no-brainer releases.

In the past, you could reliably count on a couple of popular artists releasing Christmas records. Because if I say (like last year) "Sting has a new Christmas record," you know everything you need to know. You know what it is going to sound like, and if you like Sting, or have a family member on the Christmas list who likes Sting, you'll probably buy it.

Labels also started pushing Best Of/Greatest Hits releases and Live albums to November.

Again, there's no ramping up or explaining necessary. "R.E.M. has a career-spanning Best Of coming out," has no ambiguity. If you like R.E.M., you'll probably want this.

And now, come the reissues. Albums celebrating their 10th or 15th or 20th Anniversary get the treatment, where the original album is remastered, and there is a generous package of songs from that era on a second disc.

You've probably never heard "Blow Your House Down" before, but if you've heard U2's "Achtung Baby" then you have a pretty strong sense of what this unreleased b-side is going to sound like.

That makes it an easy buy, if you're in some retail shop and you see the U2 display. You don't have to think about it, and you don't have to wonder if you'll like it, you don't have to deliberate.

You can just buy it, and the record label person behind the record can have a good holiday knowing they were doing their job all season long.


Hear the song on Youtube.

Emmet Otter "Bar-B-Que"

So what do you do about Christmas DVDs, now that Christmas is over?

I mean, your Christmas tree may come down in a day or a week, (or in my Auntie’s case, in 4 months!), but when do you call it quits on the Christmas movies and specials?

My 3-year-old is definitely not ready to say goodbye yet. Last year we were watching “Charlie Brown Christmas” well into February.

And my wife got me a childhood favorite, “Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas” . . . but I didn’t open it until Christmas day (of course) and we didn’t have a chance to watch it until last night.

(It’s been 15 years since I’d seen it last. I didn’t remember it was so damn melancholy.)

Having watched it once, a certain little someone is most definitely going to want to see it a time or two more.

So Christmas keeps on giving in our house. And yours?

G Love "Fixin' To Die"

Yeah, I'm still in holiday mode. Over-stuffed, disarrayed, wiped out, "fixin' to die" (but super-grateful).

While I get back on track, here's a free mp3 from G Love. The new record is produced by The Avett Brothers!!!

Vince Guaraldi "Linus And Lucy"

You'd be hard pressed to find someone between the ages of, say, 35 and 65, who didn't have a very definite favorite dancer, from this scene in "A Charlie Brown Christmas."



While I was a long-time fan of Shermy's pioneering "zombie walk" (sure, Michael Jackson gets the credit for the "Moonwalk," but Shermy was doing essentially the same thing, nearly 2 decades earlier) I have to say now that I'm an adult, I dig Linus' self-confident cha-cha move. He looks completely unselfconscious, and in the moment.

And I don't think I'd ever noticed before, but for a girl who's mean to others, Violet's "punching-up dancing" is majorly mock-able.

Do you have a favorite?

The full song