Dan Fogelberg//"Same Old Lang Syne"

The Jewbadours//"It Might Be You"

Mac and Me

Somewhere in Dreamland

Bert Parks//"Let 'Em In"

Vienna Teng//"Level Up"

Carnie & Wendy Wilson//"Hey Santa"

Wendy & Lisa//"The Closing of the Year"

John Denver//"Please Daddy (Don't Get Drunk This Christmas)"

"The Carpenters at Christmas" TV special

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

Bob Hope, Marilyn Maxwell, William Frawley//"Silver Bells"

Marilyn McCoo & Donna Summer//"O Come All Ye Faithful" (Solid Gold)

Billy Idol//"White Christmas"

Cast of "Promises, Promises"//"Turkey Lurkey Time"

Paul McCartney//"Wonderful Christmastime"

Sandra Lee's Kwanzaa Cake

Christmas Comes But Once a Year

Kristin Chenoweth//"Christmas Island"

"Hard to Be a Cat at Christmas"

Friskies will donate one can of food to animal rescues and shelters nationwide for every view the video receives (up to 500,000).

The Weather Girls//"Dear Santa (Bring Me a Man This Christmas)"

Yoko Kanno & Maaya Sakamoto//"Kissing the Christmas Killer"

Jane Monheit//"The Man With the Bag"

Show Your Joe (Kmart)

Christmas Comes to Pac-Land

Ariana Grande & Elizabeth Gillies//"The Christmas Song"

Grace Jones//"Little Drummer Boy"

Judith Owen & Julia Fordham//"White Christmas"

Glasvegas//"A Snowflake Fell (And It Felt Like a Kiss)

Still less creepy than "The Polar Express".

Ivy//"I Hate December"

Need I say more?

The Star Wars Holiday Special

Though this is popularly known (and universally reviled) as "the Christmas special", the Holiday Special was actually first broadcast on CBS on November 17, 1978, that is, it was a Thanksgiving special. I believe it was rerun a month later closer to Christmas, and possibly combining memories of Meco's classic "Christmas in the Stars" LP lead to the popular idea that "Life Day" is the Star Wars universe equivalent of Christmas. I personally consider it Thanksgiving, and I (and many other Star Wars fan the world over, even the ones who don't like ANY part of this special, not even ironically) acknowledge Life Day every year on November 17 (which is close enough to my birthday that I acknowledge it literally as "Life Day").

What can I say about the Star Wars Holiday Special? I like parts of it. Diahann Carroll has a beautiful number, as long as you ignore the fact that Itchy is jerking off to it. I love Bea "Beatrice" Arthur's song, both in and out of context - it's a great show-stopping cabaret number that is simultaneously joyous, poignant, fun, bitter and sad. And finally there's Carrie Fisher's Life Day anthem, which I enjoy for its sheer, extraordinary strangeness.

As for the rest of it...I don't love it. In fact, I find much of it disturbing, even horrifying (the bits with Itchy and Lumpy in particular - those faces). Even the bit that even the haters acknowledge to be at least interesting - the animated part - I personally find to be ugly, and even sort of nauseating. That's pretty much my final thought on the Special as a whole, in fact: ugly, and even sort of nauseating.