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‘Thank God It’s Not Christmas’: Sparks on French TV, 1974
12.19.2012
03:49 pm
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Sparks with their sleazy anti-Yuletide number, “Thank God It’s Not Christmas,” on French television in 1974.

From their classic breakthrough album of that year, Kimono My House.
 
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Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.19.2012
03:49 pm
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Have yourself a Southern Gothic Christmas: Add Leadbelly to your holiday mix
12.17.2012
07:36 am
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A rather festive number, considering he’s best known for the most haunting rendition of an American murder ballad ever recorded… and his violent criminal record.

If you’re familiar with Leadbelly’s life, this isn’t actually very surprising. In addition to stabbing a man in a fight and killing a relative over a woman, he recorded a large repertoire of children’s music.

 

 

Posted by Amber Frost
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12.17.2012
07:36 am
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Survival of the Festive: Charles Darwin Christmas cards
12.12.2012
01:36 pm
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Charles Darwin dons Santa’s cap in these sly Christmas cards from the British Humanist Association (BHA).

You can order a pack of 10 for £8.00 at the BHA website

Via Boing Boing

Posted by Tara McGinley
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12.12.2012
01:36 pm
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‘Tis the Season for Suicide’ Christmas tree ornaments
12.11.2012
01:33 pm
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“It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” certainly does not apply to these bleak Christmas tree ornaments by Los Angeles-based artist Todd Francis.

A set of four is $56.00.
 
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Via The World’s Best Ever

Posted by Tara McGinley
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12.11.2012
01:33 pm
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Meet the Louisville Christmas Civic: The most festive ‘Holiday Honda’ in all of Kentucky
12.04.2012
09:43 am
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Joy to the world!
 
While I love my adopted home of Brooklyn, when I see stuff like this, I can’t help but get a little homesick. I got the tip-off on this beauty from a friend out of Louisville, Kentucky, which borders my own home state of Indiana, the plates of which are featured on this glorious vehicle. It was parked, but had been driven there. No cords were visible, leading us to logical conclusion that it is fully powered on holiday cheer.

Don’t get me wrong—New York most certainly has its own version of tacky, but it’s not the tacky of my beloved middle America.

Posted by Amber Frost
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12.04.2012
09:43 am
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Delightfully devilish Krampus holiday cards
12.03.2012
02:23 pm
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Oh gawd how I adore these assorted—the set comes with 20 cards (two each of ten designs)—Krampus holiday cards.

All the glorious illustrations are from Monte Beauchamp’s book Krampus: The Devil of Christmas.

Get ‘em here: Krampus Greeting Cards: Gruss vom Krampus!.

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With thanks to Boing Boing

Posted by Tara McGinley
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12.03.2012
02:23 pm
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A brief primer on Black Power Christmas music
11.27.2012
08:08 am
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Turkey Day has passed us by, and it is officially the Christmas season. And, as the Pamplona of Black Friday reminded us, this means an onslaught of fevered consumerism, fetishizaton of commodities, conspicuous consumption, and all that other icky stuff that turns our red little stomachs stomachs. Exacerbating that nausea is the hallmark corniness of the holidays. “Peace on earth and goodwill towards men” can feel so cliched and forced when contrasted with the materialism of the spectacle. It’s easy to get a little contemptuous at Christmas.

It’s all reminiscent of George Orwell’s essay, “Why Socialists Don’t Believe in Fun.” A self-identified socialist, Orwell begins the piece with an anecdote on Lenin, who was, as the story goes, reading Dickens’ A Christmas Carol on his death bed. It’s said that communist revolutionary denounced the feel-good classic as full of “bourgeois sentimentality.” A fun guy, that one.

Orwell goes on to bemoan the kind of cynicism exhibited by Lenin and his ilk, noting that we dour anti-capitalists can’t seem to enjoy anything nostalgic or sentimental. I think anyone with much experience in radical circles has recognized the tendency. So in the interest of subverting our fuddy-duddy dispositions, allow me to show you one of my favorite Christmas music sub-genres: The Black Power Christmas Song.

Now, I’m not just talking about a Christmas song performed by a black artist, or even a Christmas song performed in a black genre. I am talking about a Christmas song that portrays Christmas itself as explicitly black. Let’s start with “The Be-Bop Santa Claus,” by Babs Gonzalez.

 
This 1957 update of T’was the Night Before Christmas starts out with the line, “T’was the black before Christmas.” Now Babs was a bebop pioneer and poet, and used to go by the name “Ricardo Gonzalez” in an attempt to get into hotels that discriminated against black people; that coy little line is an incredibly personal one. What follows is a perfect depiction of the Reaganite’s boogeyman, complete with suede shoes, Cadillacs, and Applejack; it’s fantastically subversive, unapologetic, and totally self-aware.
 
Of course, I can’t resist including the 1958 white hipster rip-off, “Beatnik’s Wish,” by Patsy Raye & the Beatniks.
 

 
It’s quite the (ahem) “homage.” Paging Norman Mailer…

If “The Be-Bop Santa Claus” alludes to urban poverty, James Brown’s “Santa Claus, Go Straight to the Ghetto” leaves nothing to the imagination.

 

 
“Say It Loud—I’m Black and I’m Proud” was released as a two-part single in August of 1968. This song was released a few months later on James’ full-length, A Soulful Christmas, which was the first LP to feature “Say it Loud.” Meaning James Brown, already a floating signifier for the Black Power Movement, released “Say it Loud—I’m Black and I’m Proud,” on a fucking Christmas album. Take that, Lenin! It acknowledges black poverty as a pressing matter of social justice in a seemingly incongruously celebratory song. Second, the song applies radical Black Power politics to something as traditional as Christmas. (If I could add a third, I’d also say that this is just a sick jam, but I digress.)

This one, however, is my absolute favorite.

 
Performed by Teddy Vann and his daughter, Akim, “Santa Claus is a Black Man” is arguably the most adorable product of Black Power. I mean look at that album cover! Look at her wee little Black Power fist! Listen to her sweet, spastic, bubbly little voice!

Not only can I not overemphasize the significance of radical children’s art being sung by an actual child (we so rarely give children the reigns, so to speak), “Santa Claus is a Black Man” is a brilliantly executed piece of kid-sized politics. You have a black child satirizing “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” which was originally sung by Jimmy Boyd, arguably the whitest damn child in the world. And the hook is, “and he’s handsome, like my Daddy, too,” an joyous assertion of “Black is Beautiful.”

Interestingly, towards the end, Akim says, “I want to wish everybody Happy Kwanzaa.” When Kwanzaa was first introduced in 1966, founder and activist Maulana Karenga promoted the holiday as a way to “give Blacks an alternative to the existing holiday, and give Blacks an opportunity to celebrate themselves and history, rather than simply imitate the practice of the dominant society.” Much to Karenga’s surprise, African Americans were rarely willing to give up the holiday of the oppressor, and eventually Karenga softened his position to allow Kwanzaa to be celebrated alongside Christmas, though not before “Santa Claus is a Black Man” was released in 1973. In the grand scheme of things, people don’t really want to be sectarian when it comes to Santa Claus.

Of course, none of this music succeeds in making Christmas cool. Even though these are great, subversive little songs, they’re also rife with the exact sort of schlocky sentimentality we’ve come to expect from Christmas music. And why shouldn’t they be? What’s so bad about sentimental and schlocky, anyway? Does Wal-Mart win if we enjoy a little syrupy holiday cheer? Will a few tender moments soften our anti-capitalist resolve? These songs are all navigating a very old tradition in order to reflect the radical ideas, the radical ideas we hope will become our new traditions. They use Christmas to represent the underrepresented and condemn racism and poverty, and they do it all with a little bit of mawkish sincerity and delight.

This Christmas, let’s resist our inner-Lenins, and let’s wallow in a little sentimentality. Hey, it was good enough for James Brown.

Posted by Amber Frost
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11.27.2012
08:08 am
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Reindeer In Blood: the Slayer Christmas sweater!
11.20.2012
06:18 pm
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No, this isn’t a joke. This is official Slayer merchandise, available from backstreet-merch.com, and a snip at only £49.99. It’s only available in the UK, mind you, but if you’re really really nice, Santa might be good to you.

 

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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11.20.2012
06:18 pm
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Merry Krampus: ‘Horribly distasteful Christmas sweater’
11.02.2012
02:07 pm
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Since department stores and drug stores decided to pump out their Christmas tunes during Halloween (WTF?), this ill-fitting, acrylic Merry Krampus sweater sends a message I agree with:

This is a limited quantity item! Krampus is the anti-Santa Claus from Europe who punishes the naughty girls and boys on Christmas Eve. If you’re bad, instead of bringing you presents, Krampus stuffs you into a sack so that he can eat you for dinner. This sweater tells the world that even though you weren’t on your best behavior this year, you’re still in the Christmas spirit. It’s the perfect look for an ugly sweater party this holiday season.

The Merry Krampus sweater is available to purchase for $42.50 at the Archie McPhee webstore.

Via Laughing Squid

Posted by Tara McGinley
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11.02.2012
02:07 pm
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Two seasonal mixtapes from Everett True
12.26.2011
08:09 am
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Ex-editor of the sadly defunct Melody Maker, author of Nirvana: The Biography and now proprietor of the excellent Collapse Board website, Everett True has not one but two Christmas mixtapes available to download just now. They covers all bases from the popular to the obscure, from funk to country to punk to indie(ish) and everything in-between. Everett himself says:

I spend great chunks of early December arranging and rearranging the 1,500+ Christmas songs in my iTunes folder into various playlists: for family, for friends, not for the children, and so on. Odd that I do so, as I’m really not fond of this time of year otherwise (although that feeling is changing as our family increases). This year, my task has been somewhat hampered by Daniel (aged 2) destroying the external hard drive, just two weeks after I’d transferred my entire cache of 2011 music onto it.

I suspend most of my regular aesthetic values when it comes to this season. As long as there’s a sleigh bell or an overtly schmaltzy production or a smart-ass lyric decrying the fact Santa NEVER BRINGS ANY FUCKING PRESENTS or some soulful heartfelt emotion or … well, anything to do with the season, really … I’m happy. I do have limits of course: Fiona Apple, that excrescence of a Bob Dylan Christmas album that appeared a while back, most of the She And Him Christmas album (although they still manage to sneak onto the collection below), most of X Factor (but not all), anything too self-consciously smart and/or indie. But really. Where else are you going to find a compilation that boasts Mariah Carey, The Moonbears, Willie Nelson, Can and Wild Billy Childish’s killer cut ‘Christmas 1979′?

As ever, the following restrictions apply:

The track-listing on the mix-tapes differs slightly to the one below. Copyright considerations, and all that. Also, the compilations will be available for a limited period only. If you like any of the featured artists, please track back to their MySpace sites, record company home pages and the like, and show support by purchasing their music direct.

Download A Christmas Gift from Everett True 2011, part one here.

Download A Christmas Gift from Everett True 2011, part two here.

As he says, download these now as they’ll be taken down very soon.

BONUS!

Shonen Knife’s “Space Christmas” (as featured on ACGFET2011 vol two):
 

 
Full tracklistings after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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12.26.2011
08:09 am
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Alfred Hitchcock Presents: ‘Back for Christmas’
12.25.2011
08:10 pm
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Alfred Hitchcock Presents…Back for Christmas, based on John Collier‘s story of a man who plans to murder his wife, and bury her in the cellar. Collier’s short story was originally printed in the New Yorker magazine in 1939, this was the story’s first TV outing, there were 3 different versions made for radio, including one with Peter Lorre, and was latter remade for Roald Dahl’s series Tales of the Unexpected in the 1970s.

Collier wrote dozens of stories, many of which were successfully produced for various radio, TV and film productions - including “Green Thoughts”, the basis for Roger Corman’s Little Shop of Horrors. He also contributed to such screenplays as the Humphrey Bogart / Katharine Hepburn movie The African Queen and the play based on Christopher Isherwood’s “Berlin Stories” I Am A Camera. Towards the end of his life, Collier jokingly said of himself:

“I sometimes marvel that a third-rate writer like me has been able to palm himself off as a second-rate writer.”

Hitchock’s version of Back for Christmas stars John Williams as Herbert Carpenter and Isobel Elsom as Hermione Carpenter, and was first broadcast in March 1956.
 

 
Part 2, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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12.25.2011
08:10 pm
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Some Christmas words from The Divine David
12.25.2011
08:24 am
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Photo by Steven Cheshire
 
Did you know that “Santa” is an anagram of “Satan”? The Divine David (now known simply as David Hoyle) certainly does. Here’s a couple of clips of David spreading his own particular brand of Christmas cheer, the first showing us how to alternatively decorate a Christmas tree:
 


 
Previously on DM:
It’s Christmas, the world is burning, let’s masturbate: the Divine David Hoyle

After the jump, The Divine David’s disturbing memories of Santa’s abattoir…

READ ON
Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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12.25.2011
08:24 am
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Wiley’s message to all the haters -  ‘Cheer Up, It’s Christmas’
12.24.2011
01:15 pm
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And if you really, really don’t like disco, then perhaps this is more up your street. It’s an unexpected Christmas cracker by the king of UK grime Wiley, taken from his forthcoming album Evolve Or Be Extinct (to be released on Big Dada Recordings on 19th January - pre-order available here.)

This track is hilarious, the beat’s great and the sentiment is universal - about a family trying to cheer up that one misery guts who would rather stay upstairs playing Xbox while everyone else is downstairs having a drink and a laugh. We’ve all been there I’m sure:

“Go on, have a dance with aunt Shirley/
A little wind-up an’ that/
No, you go have a dance with Shirley/
Leave me alone anyway!”

I only found this track about an hour ago, and I’ve already listened to it half a dozen times. In fact, I’m going to listen to it again, right now. And you should too, it’s a future Christmas classic:
 

 
 

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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12.24.2011
01:15 pm
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‘Excuse My Christmas’ - it’s the return of Jan Terri
12.23.2011
06:34 pm
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Legendary outsider musician Jan Terri is back! Almost twenty years after the recording of her classics “Get Down Goblin” and “Losing You” (regularly voted one of the worst videos of all time, but actually one hell of a catchy track), Jan is set to release a new album next year called Wild One. “Excuse My Christmas” is the first single from the album, and screw Billy Idol, Bob Dylan, Ozzy Osbourne & Jessica Simpson, the Beatles or any of that other shit - THIS is what Christmas should be about: 
 

 
After the jump, the video for Jan Terri’s 1994 Christmas track “Rock’n'Roll Santa”...

READ ON
Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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12.23.2011
06:34 pm
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Singing Christmas Hedgehogs
12.16.2011
02:48 pm
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The talented bods at Bird Box Studios have made this fun animation, Singing Christmas Hedgehogs, where you can pick and dress a hedgehog to serenade you. How neat is that?
 

 
Via b3ta
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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12.16.2011
02:48 pm
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