What's the worst part about the holidays? The consumerism? The awkward office parties? Belligerent relatives and needy offspring? No, its holiday music, especially those involving former heroes [NSFOP]. This year, give the gift of non-suckage.
posted by MiltonRandKalman on Dec 11, 2008 - 50 comments

Time to kill while waiting for Santa to arrive/dinner to digest/family to leave? Well, here's a Very Special Holiday Episode fpp just for you. God bless us, every one. [more inside]
posted by miss lynnster on Dec 24, 2007 - 49 comments

It has now been several years since Jacquie Lawson, an English artist living in the picturesque village of Lurgashall in Southern England, created an animated Christmas card in 2000. The e-card, featuring her dog, Chudleigh, her cats, and her 15th-century cottage, was sent to a few friends for their amusement. Those friends sent the e-card to others, and within weeks Jacquie was inundated with requests from all over the world to design more e-cards. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye on Dec 20, 2007 - 29 comments

tacky christmas yards dot com is exactly what it sounds like. [via]
posted by dersins on Dec 18, 2007 - 45 comments

An FPP for your holiday listening pleasure. Ha ha ha. [more inside]
posted by miss lynnster on Dec 18, 2007 - 15 comments

30 Years of LucasFilm Christmas Cards (I triple-dog dare ya!)
posted by ColdChef on Dec 15, 2007 - 18 comments

Santastic I, II, and now III, holiday mash-ups, alternate treatments and bootleg remixes.
Previously
posted by Mwongozi on Dec 5, 2007 - 10 comments

Park your carcass in front of the TV for the next six weeks. Here is the upcoming broadcast schedule for every show that has even the tiniest connection to The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.
posted by Kibbutz on Nov 21, 2007 - 31 comments

Sometimes You Have to Work on Christmas - a Harvey Danger song for all those who keep the wheels turning. (YouTube alert)
posted by madamjujujive on Dec 24, 2006 - 22 comments

It's all about the tree. (YouTube)
posted by exlotuseater on Dec 16, 2006 - 26 comments

Santa'd: Flickr's new holiday Easter egg.
posted by brundlefly on Dec 13, 2006 - 36 comments

Of all the Christmas cards I received this year from political action committees, this one from the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep & Bear arms best summed up the holiday spirit to me.
posted by jonson on Dec 29, 2005 - 75 comments

Santastic: Holiday boots for your stockings. Mash-ups of decades of Christmas records just in time for the holidays. The quality varies throughout, but it makes for some fun manic listening if you've grown tired of the same perennial chestnuts. Merry Christmash to all, and to all a boot night.
posted by Robot Johnny on Dec 3, 2005 - 14 comments

Santa Santa Santa Santa It's Friday, it's Flash, it's Christmas Eve, so....
posted by SPrintF on Dec 24, 2004 - 17 comments

Tis the Season -- a new short story from China Mieville, just in time for the Holidays™ ... Don't get me wrong. I haven't got shares in YuleCo™, and I can't afford a one-day end-user licence, so I couldn't have a legal party. I'd briefly considered buying from one of the budget competitors like XmasTym, or a spinoff from a non-specialist like Coca-Crissmas, but the idea of doing it on the cheap was just depressing...
posted by amberglow on Dec 23, 2004 - 14 comments

The War on Christmas. "What we are witnessing here are hate crimes against Christianity." Angered by perceived attacks on the Christ part of Christmas, Christians are taking a page from GWB and staging pre-emptive cultural strikes around the country. Or are they? Is this effort a bigger attack against Judaism and the rest of the nonbelievers/scapegoats, an honest attempt by Christians to "save" the holiday, or a media-manufactured controversy? (Air out your holiday spirit, but save your own personal grievances for December 23.)
posted by mrgrimm on Dec 16, 2004 - 212 comments

The Ten Least Successful Holiday Specials of All Time. From An Algonquin Round Table Christmas to Noam Chomsky: Deconstructing Christmas, these are the worst Christmas specials ever. I'd pay good money to see the Ayn Rand one for real.
posted by apathy0o0 on Dec 4, 2004 - 44 comments

Mistletunes - your one-stop resource for those half-remembered Rock 'n' Roll Christmas songs of today and yesteryear. I'm partial to the novelty tunes of the '50's and '60's myself (as well a bit of punk), but you can also check out the lists of Hanukkah Hits, Surfin' Christmas, and keep up with the latest Christmas releases.
posted by anastasiav on Dec 15, 2003 - 5 comments

Virtual Snowglobe Having a bad day? Work off some aggression by disrupting the lives of the snowglobe dwellers! (Flash and a somewhat obnoxious soundtrack)
posted by Orb on Dec 4, 2003 - 11 comments

Twas the night before Xmas and all through the net,
The geeks would be googling the ascii character set;
Metafilter refreshed on their PCs with care,
In the hopes that their FPP soon would be there;

Then up in the blue there arose such a clatter,
Mathowie sprang up to see what's the matter;
When, what to my wondering eyes there should be,
The canonical list of "Twas" parodies.
posted by Wet Spot on Dec 22, 2002 - 11 comments

Advent Calendars are those paper cards with 25 doors that you open for each day leading up to Christmas. Though they began as a religious custom, many today are just for fun, and they've made their way online. They can be created by web designers, design firms or illustrators to display their talent, by newspapers or hand-drawn by a 7 year old Norwegian kid. They can have a theme like a holiday cookie recipe, a Bengal cat, a perl script, an international custom, a charity or a not safe for work nude babe of the day. They can even tell a story as in the charming Tate the Cat. Download a template to modify your own. Have you spotted any good ones in your web travels?
posted by madamjujujive on Dec 2, 2002 - 25 comments

Happy Thanksgiving or Is It? In 1939, Franklin Delano Roosevelt responed to pressure from the National Retail Dry Goods Association to move the official date of Thanksgiving back one week to the next-to-last Thursday of the month. FDR hoped that this would enliven the economy by adding one week to the Christmas shopping season, but he received considerable political flak for tampering with what many viewed as a sacred religious holiday. (Thanksgiving is considered sacred even though it only became a national holiday due to lobbying by the editor of a 19th century woman's magazine.) New Deal-era Republicans were especially bothered by the calendar change and one essayist at the American Enterprise Institute still seems to carry a grudge. Congress later resolved the issue by passing a resolution in 1941 that designated Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday of November.
posted by jonp72 on Nov 26, 2002 - 11 comments

Merry Christmas. Maybe these families were traumatized by Santa at some point.
posted by Modem Ovary on Nov 28, 2001 - 31 comments

Merry Christmas! (please note: this is not a link. It's just a random cheerbombing.)
posted by Succa on Dec 24, 2000 - 22 comments

Enjoy what may be your last royalty-free Christmas dinner... Opinion solicitation: is either extreme right here? Is there a compromise solution that will satisfy both sides? Where do the rest of us (i.e., the food consumers) fit in to this?
posted by rushmc on Dec 24, 2000 - 5 comments

Tired of Christmas music? I reckon so. I sure understand. Still, trust me on this. You're in for a treat. We're Just Three Kings gives me goose pimples on the back of my neck every time I hear it. Most know about mp3c, but few wanna dig around in there. It's like falling into a record bin big as Cleveland. Here let me help you. I'm recommending only sure-things here - Tamashiro's What Child Is This is straight-forward, no-nonsense, feelgood Christmas fare. Liona Boyd's instrumental guitar is heavenly background music that would warm the heart of the coldest Grinch. If you find yourself surprised with a need to have free Xmas music real fast, it's just a pooter away, Santa Baby.
posted by ZachsMind on Dec 24, 2000 - 9 comments

A Very Wookie Christmas. I'm speechless in horror. This actually happened? This actually made it to the airwaves? Thank heavens Lucas is keeping it deeply, deeply hidden forever.
posted by dnash on Dec 5, 2000 - 26 comments

Even though the movie 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas' doesn't come out until a year from now, they've already got a flash teaser up at their site.
posted by mathowie on Dec 8, 1999 - 0 comments