Peace on Earth / Little Drummer Boy - David Bowie & Bing Crosby
It's worth watching , from a 1977 CBS TV Special. All the small nods towards aging into obscurity are perhaps a littler more poignant, given that Bing Crosby died a month after filming: : Hallo. Are you, ah, the new butler? : It's been a long time since I've been the new anything. When asked to sing 'Little Drummer Boy', Bowie refused, saying he hated the song and was only doing the show because his mother loved Bing Crosby. The show's writers told him to wait, ran frantically into a meeting room, and bashed out the counterpoint in just over an hour. : Do you like modern music? : Oh, I think it's marvellous. Some of it really fine. But tell me, uh... You ever listen to any of the older fellas? : Oh yeah, sure, I like, uh, John Lennon and the other one... Harry Nelson. : You go back that far, huh? I think I'm disproportionately affected by the thought of old people fading into lonely obscurity. It's no sadder than many other injustices, but something gets to me about people forgotten by a society they've served for decades upon decades. Earlier this year, I was speaking on an abortion rights + technology panel. I was chatting to this one older lady before the panel started, and I gradually realized that she knew a more than me about the topic. In fact, Pat had been one of the first abortion rights activists in the USA (see: ). "It's amazing how quickly people forget," she said, explaining herself to yet another young person who had never heard of her. (There's a particularly painful panel in Kate Beaton's comic that hits that same note.) It's easy to be callous and young. I don't think I know how not to be. (some )

Last Christmas - Erlend Øye
I get sceptical looks when I talk about how much I liked christmas music, probably because there are an awful lot of boring and/or insufferable seasonal songs in this world. That said, there is one classic, frequently-covered christmas song that I truly detest: Last Christmas. I cringe when it comes on at the grocery store. Its wavering melody is as whiny as its lyrics. More unforgivably, it keeps tempting bands that I like into producing unlistenable covers (). It's not just me; there's a whole dedicated to avoiding this song. This stripped-down, depressing cover doesn't really stick to the original's whiny melody. Usually I have to  songs to get them on this mix, but making me not hate is a notable achievement.

Dance of the Floreadores (Waltz of the Flowers) - Duke Ellington & His Orchestra
The choir that I was around age seven or so in performed in the . We were the angelic - in the background of . It seemed glamorous when I first heard we'd be doing it; imagine people other than our parents paying to hear us sing! When we went to rehearse, though, the choir shuffled through the back door and entered the strange grimy world backstage. We lined up in a hallway of unadorned whitewashed brick, because there was nowhere else to practice, and went through our warm-ups beneath a bare bulb. The orchestra pit was more of the same, spare and dark. I could hardly see anything- a little of the set, a few pairs of distant feet moving, a bright stage and a darkness that I assumed held the audience. I eventually went to watch the ballet with my mum and was surprised again, because there was all the glamour I'd been missing! Airy glass and gold accents and ushers in tuxedos. It just never extended behind the curtain. Maybe I like this brassy, jazzy arrangement because it sounds a bit more like the  grime I remember than the usual poised trills.

Big Bulbs - Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings

There's a specific, tender joy in a pop song's horn section, no? The first twenty seconds of this are just so darn peppy.

Strings of bulbs are so strongly associated with xmas that we often call them "christmas lights" regardless of season (though N.B. they're known as "fairy lights" on the other side of the pond). I was reading some history of this and it ends up being a history of electrification: people coated buildings in festive lights nearly as soon as they could and strung up glass globes of candles before that.

Anyway, given the startling lack of Lightamin D around this time of year-

- it doesn't surprise me that there are a lot of northern-hemisphere festivals of light going down. (Not All Festivals, mind you, and I admit that bibliomancy, apparently part of traditional Persian solstice celebrations, is even more rad than big bulbs.)

No Christmas For Me - Zee Avi
The song's title lies: yes Christmas for all of us! You made it! You've even almost made it through twenty-sixteen! This is the last xmas countdown song for this year, but I'll probably make it through to next December, and if so I'll be here, facing off the bleakness of the holiday spirit with cheesy tunes and perhaps with you. I'll take this year's songs offline at some point, so download them soon or you'll be reduced to streaming the mix on . Merry xmas and may all your knowledge be true, - Tessa

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas - Cat Power
Cat Power has a gift for making the celebratory melancholy. Then again, Hugh Martin's original lyrics- -  had to be cheered up before the song was recorded, so this may just be a return to form.

This Christmas - Donny Hathaway
I wonder if it's good that we mythologize late December as uniquely full of comfort and joy, ideally felt from within the familiar embrace of your beloved relatives- - do most people  their families enough for this to make sense? I'm lucky enough to look forward to time with my parents and brother and grandad and cetera, but, c'mon- ? I've had a half-dozen conversations with people this week who are dreading the retreading of old ossified parental patterns. Not everyone looks forward to going home. Anyway, this is probably the cheesiest song you'll get from me this year, but I do earnestly hope that (if perhaps despite the people you're spending it with).

Coldest Night of the Year - Vashti Bunyan
Tonight is the darkest night of the year, not the coldest. Still, darkness makes the cold more acute. I'm back in Toronto for solstice, which is the same as it has been for a decade, a gift of constancy. Oh sure, that one year we watched the bonfire from the top of the public washroom and another we waved flags at the head of the parade and this year the kitchen is no longer bubblegum pink. Mostly, though, solstice is the same, familiar people apple cider.

The First Noël - Bob Dylan
This gravelly old man croaking over a children's choir? This is what Christmas music sounds like.

All Alone on Christmas - Darlene Love
Another song evoking urban anonymity among the  and . The lyrics are lonely, but my main referent for this song is where Kevin realizes he's all alone in New York for Christmas and, rather than crying or asking any adult for help, behaves like a proper child protagonist and gets really excited to wander the city independently and buy himself pizza and toys. Apparently this is the correct referent! Despite sounding like , this song was released in 1992 along with the movie.

Silent Night - The Polyphonic Spree
The most silent nights I've ever listened to in winter, every sound muffled by snow, though I suspect that effect wouldn't have been in force in pre-global-warming Bethlehem. So: unclear how silent the night in question would have been. The Polyphonic Spree- who bill themselves as a "choral symphonic pop rock band"- at least play the song with delightfully creepy rests and sparse, ringing notes.

(thought I sent this yesterday, whoops)

First: this song has exactly the sort of melancholoy-celebratory,  lyrics that keep me coming back to the xmas genre:

Santa Claus is Coming to Town - Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Fitzgerald starts off the myth of with a conspiratorial introduction which I've not heard in any other version: Santa Claus Is Coming To Town has always been one of the creepier carols and I like that this rendition doesn't hide that this is fundamentally a warning under any .

Fancy Postman - Faye and the Scrooges
I often feel that British people are simply better at snark that North Americans. This song, a sarcastic dressing down of Mr. Claus, does nothing to dispel that notion. According to (a blog I found this year that will be responsible for many of the songs I send you) Faye and the Scrooges are "a group of friends who get together and write/record a Christmas song with just enough time to give them to friends at the pub on Christmas eve", which makes this song even more charming.