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Merry Christmas, Baby!

by Rachel Sklar | 12:02 pm, December 25th, 2009

» 5 comments

Josh Groban – O Holy Night

Sorry, Garrison Keillor, here’s another Jew trashing up your holiday with his beautiful voice rendering a much-loved classic — Josh Groban singing “O Holy Night.” HOW DARE HE. Groban, why don’t you stick to beautifully rendering “I’m F*ing Ben Affleck.”

Twelve Days of Christmas – John Denver & The Muppets

This is much less weird than Kermit the Frog saying goodbye to Charlie Gibson.

Fairytale Of New York – The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl

Shane MacGowan and Kristy MacColl singing their version of a lifelong lovesong is poignant and raw and merry and perfect. Lyrics here, they are important, mark them well.

La Vie Boheme – Rent

A joyous, life-affirming song for a (very) downtown Christmas Eve — it’s fashionable to hate on Rent now that it’s been so widely updated (and imitated), and to hate on the movie for not quite getting it, but I can remember seeing Rent on Broadway in the fall of 1997 from the fourth row, and let me tell you, I am not sure the experience has been matched. This song is about as good as it gets (even if this version is less than ideal). Roger! Stop being so too cool for school, it’s annoying already. p.s. If it were written today, how many references to “Obama” do you think would be in there?

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Robert Quigley

Great list! Fairytale of New York is my fave. Also good: the Ella Fitzgerald/Louis Jordan rendition of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” (link) and The Waitresses’ awesome proto-dance-rap “Christmas Wrapping:”

Happy holidays!
Rachel Sklar

Aaaah Quigs, I should have crowd-sourced this one, eh? Thanks for this. (And also, DUH. I’m an idiot.) Hope you’re having a great day!!
kevinsemicolon

This one will go down as one of the great atheist anti-commerce Christmas songs:

Merry Atheistmas!
kevinsemicolon

Oops, that didn’t work. I’m an idiot too. This?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCNvZqpa-7Q
BJL411

Screw all those old xmas shows I grew up with. Stephen Colbert Christmas special, shown last year and again this year, is unique, funny as h’ll, entertaining. His guests were Toby Keith, Elvis Costello, Willie Nelson, Jon Stewart, and some folk singer named Feist. The show was very unique.. full of music and just great to re-see. Oh and Stephen has an amazingly good singing voice as seen in his skit with Willie Nelson.

Here’s a piece from his duet with Jon Stewart, Elvis Costello, etc..

(hope this shows up)

The Colbert ReportMon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30cA Colbert Christmas: Colbert/Costello Duet http://www.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Economy