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HAPPY CHRISTMAS!
The day has finally come when people around the country will be opening presents, going to mass, enjoying Christmas dinner and seeing family and friends.
If you fancy a quiet moment, why not settle down in a comfy chair and enjoy some of this month’s festive longreads?
It’s one of the most beloved Christmas films ever made, but when it was first released in 1946, it was criticised as being “over-sentimental”. Adam Valente writes about how it became a classic.
(BBC, approx 7 mins reading time)
In the eight decades since its release, It’s a Wonderful Life has become a sacrosanct part of the holiday period. James Stewart stars as George Bailey, a savings and loans manager who contemplates taking his own life until an angel shows him a vision of how much worse off his town and his loved ones would be if he had never been born. Due to a clerical oversight, the film’s copyright expired in 1974, and the subsequent television broadcasts cemented its reputation as a Christmas classic. And yet, even in 1974, its director Frank Capra was still having to defend it from the charge of being “over-sentimental”. “I think it was probably the strongest picture I’ve made,” Capra told a BBC reporter in an episode of Film Extra. “I think it’s my favourite film because it epitomises everything I tried to say in all the other films in one package.”
The Irish expats who will be spending their first festive season in Australia.
(The Irish Times, approx 5 mins reading time)
Maria O’Dowd (28), from Co Galway, who now lives in Perth, says spending her first Christmas on the other side of the world will be “challenging”. With her friends in Perth heading home for the holiday season, O’Dowd will spend Christmas in Melbourne with her Irish friends who live here. She says: “Being away from home for Christmas this year will be really challenging, but I am excited about it because it is something I have never done before. Friends who have lived in Australia for a few years have always told me that it’s crucial to enjoy Christmas as best I can here and avoid making it feel like Christmas at home as it would be hard to meet the expectations.” On Christmas Day, O’Dowd plans to hit the beach with friends followed by dinner, drinks and games in the evening (her contribution to dinner will be Brussels sprouts and dessert ). “There will be a lot of people on Christmas Day, some people I know from home and some people from Ireland I have never met before … It will be easier to be away from home knowing there are other Irish people celebrating Christmas with me as they are also separated from friends, family and loved ones during this time,” she says.
A melancholy piece about what happened when Macaulay Culkin watched the Christmas classic with a theatre full of fans 34 years on.
(Vulture, approx 10 mins reading time)
Culkin answers gamely; he’s relaxed. But everything he says has a tinge of melancholy. He calls the movie “a curse and a blessing” but says he’s come to appreciate it more now that he has kids he can share it with. He tells an anecdote about watching his stunt double, a child-size adult of indeterminate age, having to fall off Buzz’s bookshelf over and over until he got it right. He notes that the McCallister house sometimes comes up for sale and he’s considered buying and Airbnb-ing it, but it seems like “a lot of work.” An audience member asks him which other cast member from the movie he’d want to switch roles with, and Culkin says the neighbor kid who is mistaken for Kevin as the family leaves for the airport “because that kid got to go home early.” You can feel his weariness with the child-star thing. The entertainment industry has extracted so much from him. Every time he imitates an adult, or someone who was an adult when he was a child, he uses the same gravelly, tough-guy voice. Eventually, the Gen-Zers behind me complain, “He only does two voices, his own and that gravelly one.” As if he should be more entertaining, have more funny voices cued up.
How the novelty song became a Christmas classic.
(The New York Times, approx 12 mins reading time)
“Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” which Elmo & Patsy first released independently in 1979, has become as synonymous with the holiday season as week-old fruitcake and re-gifting. In 1983, the song hit No. 1 on the Billboard Christmas Hits Singles chart, beating out Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” and Bobby Helms’s “Jingle Bell Rock.” It matched that feat again in 1984 and 1985, and charted on the Holiday 100 as recently as 2016. Unlike the grandma in the lyrics, “Grandma” the song refuses to die, despite regularly appearing on lists of the weirdest or most hated holiday songs. It showed up in a pivotal scene in the 2005 war drama “Jarhead,” and inspired the title of an episode of “Grey’s Anatomy.” It has spawned a line of musical toys, Hallmark ornaments, a scratch-off lottery game and an animated TV movie airing next week, as it has every holiday season for more than two decades.
Nora Loreto explores the origins of Christmas carols and how they were closer to today’s pop music than anything else when they first appeared.
(The Walrus, approx 16 mins reading time)
Most people might not count “All I Want for Christmas Is You” or “Fairytale of New York” among the traditional canon of Christmas music. But both these songs, in their joyousness, expressions of love and longing, catchiness, and even the drunkenness of the latter, are closer to the origins of Christmas carols than you might expect. I am a Christmas music nerd. I practised Christmas music every autumn until I was twenty, whether in choirs, concert band, or as a church organist. The music spanned seven centuries, from medieval carols to cheesy and catchy pop tunes. Regardless of when they were written and how they’re structured, Christmas carols have a timeless authenticity about them. With their rich history, they are equal parts popular, joyous, solemn, religious and, yes, secular.
Three current and former personal assistants detail the kind of tasks and over-the-top requests they had to perform for their very wealthy employers at Christmastime.
(The Cut, approx 10 mins reading time)
Our boss never used company funds to buy personal gifts. But sometimes she would have one of us reach out to a PR person to request an item that she wanted to give to someone, either at a discount or for free. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it was a very common thing for high-ranking executives in our industry to get these kinds of perks. She was also a really thoughtful gift-giver. She chose things very carefully and really wanted them to be meaningful. I don’t think any recipients minded that things were regifted, and there wasn’t an effort to cover it up. They were amazing gifts! If you get an Hermès scarf, do you care about how it was obtained? I almost mixed up a gift once, and I legitimately thought I would lose my job.
Wham! made chart history last week when Last Christmas became the first song in chart history to be crowned Christmas number one for two years in a row – some 40 years after its initial release.
Here’s a longread from 2017 about how the festive classic by Andrew Ridgeley and the late, great George Michael that still has our hearts came to be.
(The Guardian, approx 9 mins reading time)
The song was recorded in August, 1984, at London’s once-fashionable Advision studios (by the time Wham! got there, its technology was rudimentary and dated). Earlier that year, Michael had wrested control of Wham! – and his burgeoning solo career – from a dodgy record contract. He had also started building himself up as a serious creative force from less-than-serious foundations. The 21-year-old wrote, produced, performed and painstakingly played every single instrument on the track. Having gradually rid the recording process of interfering producers, managers, record company executives and even his bandmate Andrew Ridgeley, the only people admitted into the Last Christmas studio were Michael’s engineer, Chris Porter, and two assistants – not that they had much input. Porter remembers “desperately wanting to play sleigh bells”, but like everything else, they were jangled only by Michael himself.
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