4 Ways to Gear Up for Christmas

Daniel Klotz — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 19:17:24 +0000

With Thanksgiving come and gone, it’s now legal and appropriate to shift into the Christmas season. I’m pretty nuts about the holiday, and part of the reason is all the great celebratory art. Put this stuff on you computer and get in the yuletide spirit.

1. Download Deep Tracks of Christmas Music

You need these tracks. The links point to iTunes. For links pointing to Amazon, check out my fuller list of Christmas music from last year.

Sugar Rum Cherry (Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy), Duke Ellington – Sensual, imaginative, and classy. Hands down the best Christmas jazz track I’ve ever found.
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Word>>>Flesh, feat. Katie Becker
Shepherd’s Song, Katie Becker – Born right here in Lancaster County. This list is showing my predisposition toward “beautiful and haunting.”
Old Waits Carol, Kate & Anne McGarrigle – Dark and haunting, not your typical Christmas jingle. Harkens back to a time when winter was much more deadly, and Christmas was an occasion to take heart, despite the fact that “today you may be alive and well… tomorrow dead and cold as clay.”
Figlio Dello Ande, Al Bano Carrisi – Italian, vocals with guitar, flute, and drums. One of the joys of Christmas is experiencing the traditions of other cultures. This is one of the more beautiful foreign-language songs in my Christmas collection.
Carol of the Beasts, Pete Seeger – Banjo and Seeger’s voice. A wonderful traditional folk song that may have been tragically lost if not for Seeger’s preservation efforts.
All the King’s Horns, Sufjan Stevens – Banjo and Sufjan’s voice (and some other voices and instruments, too). Sufjan’s five-EP Christmas collection has become a treasure to me. As with Seeger’s album, it’s barn music.
Undrentide, Mediæval Baebes – Along with the joy of experiencing Christmas with other cultures is experiencing Christmas with other points in history. There are many great Christmas songs from the Middle Ages. This is among my favorites. (Another great artists in this vein is Andrew Parrott.)
All My Heart This Night Rejoices, J.G. Ebeling If you enjoy traditional church hymns, this is an overlooked one that merits revisiting. This version is from the Cambridge Singers.

2. Spice Up Your Christmas Letter with Holiday Fonts

From the classy to the obnoxious, there are excellent (and free!) Christmas typefaces on Dafont.com, including dingbats, like this one from ChristmasTime:

3. Watch Classic Scenes from TV Specials

I’m thinking specifically of the final 30 seconds of Christmas Eve on Sesame Street:

Or, for that matter, the cinematic comedic genius of the segment from 7:15 to 8:35 of the same special:

And then there’s Quasimodo conducting The Carol of the Bells:

A Garfield Minus Garfield version of Garfield’s Christmas Special:

4. Decorate Your Desktop

Holiday Lights – Here’s how you do it so it looks tacky but tolerable: Put holly in the top two corners, nothing along the bottom, and mini bulbs plus 32-pixel spacers along the sides and top. Then set the flashing to “random” and turn off the screen saver.
Christmas Wallpaper
Sign up to receive e-mails from The Church of England’s Advent Calendar. Their intro video encourages us to purchase fair-trade gifts this year.

Christmas Music You Don’t Want To Miss

Daniel Klotz — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 10:00:29 +0000

This Christmas season, here are some tracks you don’t want to miss. If you buy the mp3s from Amazon using these links, WXPN will get a piece of the action, so indulge aggressively.