BONUS: Introducing No Skip Christmas - Justin McElroy

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Speaker 10 Hey, happy Thanksgiving. This is Arnie from Earth, breaking in with a little extra something.

Speaker 10 I know we're taking a couple of weeks off for Thanksgiving, but I wanted to share with you my new podcast, No Skip Christmas.

Speaker 2 It's a Christmas music playlist podcast mini-series.

Speaker 10 I've been doing them through November. I'm going to be doing them every Tuesday until Christmas.

Speaker 10 And if you'll forgive the intrusion, if you'll forgive the interruption, I'm sharing the first episode of No Skip Christmas, the one with the guest Justin McElroy, here on the feed in case you haven't had a chance to hear it yet.

Speaker 10 And the episodes that have already come out have included guest Helen Zaltzman from The Illusionist, Jonathan Colton and Paulin Storm, the Grammy-nominated rapper Mega Ran, and the new one this week, our dear friends, Zach and Jess from Offbook, The Improvised Musical.

Speaker 2 Oh, they're so good.

Speaker 16 They're so fun. It's a good episode.

Speaker 10 Anyway, if you enjoy this, if it seems like something you'd be into, there are links to the podcast feed in the show notes, or you could just look up No Skip Christmas on whatever podcatcher you use.

Speaker 10 You can figure it out. I believe in you.
Anyway, I should stop introing the show so you can get to the part at the beginning of the show where I intro the show.

Speaker 17 Hope you're doing well. Talk to you soon.

Speaker 14 Hey, happy holidays.

Speaker 16 This is No Skip Christmas, a Christmas music playlist podcast.

Speaker 19 I'm Arnie Niekamp. I love Christmas music.

Speaker 10 I love the challenge of it.

Speaker 10 For years, I've curated a Christmas music playlist and I enjoy the challenge of adding, having variety, lots of surprises, but also, and this is the hard part, having it still feel fundamentally Christmassy.

Speaker 16 So I'm excited to have some of my friends on who I also know are Christmas music enthusiasts, and I'll share some of the songs on my playlist with them, and they'll share some songs with me, and I'll decide whether those songs go on my playlist or do not go on my playlist.

Speaker 16 The stakes could not be higher.

Speaker 10 I'm excited to be joined in this first episode by the great Justin McElroy. Justin, thanks for coming on the show.

Speaker 6 Hey, Arnie, it is so, such a big pleasure for me. I love this topic.
I love Christmas music in general, but I love thinking about it and talking about it. And not everybody does.

Speaker 6 You know, it's weird when you start, have you ever started enthusing about Christmas music to somebody who gives you that dead eye? Like,

Speaker 6 you know, you might as well be talking about like the potpourri you enjoy. It's atmosphere, man.
I don't know what you mean.

Speaker 10 But to me, part of what's great about it is it's largely maligned. A lot of it is genuinely bad.
Although, to be fair, some of the stuff that is bad, I do like.

Speaker 16 Some of it that's bad, I really don't like.

Speaker 10 But the fun part part is like digging through, finding fun stuff.

Speaker 24 Yep.

Speaker 10 So, for listeners who aren't familiar, Justin is a host of many podcasts, My Brother, My Brother, and Me, The Adventure Zone, Sawbones, many more.

Speaker 10 But the main reason that I wanted to have Justin on is years ago, he posted a playlist of Christmas music on social media somewhere.

Speaker 10 And I looked at it and I snagged many songs that I'm sure at some point I'll be recommending on future episodes of this podcast.

Speaker 16 I have. And then some that I did not.
But that, you know,

Speaker 8 it had like a high hit rate for me, basically.

Speaker 16 Thank you.

Speaker 6 That's so flattering. Do you remember the name of that playlist, Arnie?

Speaker 13 I do not. Do you?

Speaker 6 It is called Justin's Christmas Adventure Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. If you find it on Spotify, you can read this description.

Speaker 6 Justin's at it again, and this time he's bringing the whole gang to the North Pole.

Speaker 6 Join Justin, Justin McLroy, Stumbo the Troll, Kevin Pollock, and their buddy, Darlene, Dame Judy Ding, as they try to save Santa from the evil Carnisgrian, Kevin Sorbo.

Speaker 6 So that is why this is why fictional playlist, apparently, I do not remember writing this at all, Arnie. I do not know how this came to be.

Speaker 10 I do not have no memory of reading that part of it.

Speaker 27 Me neither.

Speaker 12 I don't know.

Speaker 24 I don't remember writing.

Speaker 14 You wouldn't have been my first guest if I had remembered.

Speaker 17 Who knows?

Speaker 10 It sort of feels like it's in a series of like earnest movies.

Speaker 8 Like you've gotten to the movies.

Speaker 29 Yes, exactly. Yes.

Speaker 6 I wanted my own holiday. This would be the soundtrack to my holiday movie because I would want it to be impeccable.

Speaker 10 Yeah, but I also love that you're like, you know what?

Speaker 20 If I did my Earnest movies, I'd be able to pull Dame Judy Dench into the cast.

Speaker 6 We'd been looking for something to work on together.

Speaker 10 Justin, what is generally your relationship to Christmas? How Christmassy a guy are you? Or is it just the music?

Speaker 6 I grew up in a pretty religious household, and we were very much,

Speaker 6 you know, go to church Sundays and Wednesdays. So Christmas.

Speaker 26 Sundays and Wednesdays. That's.

Speaker 6 Yeah. And we did the Wednesday night youth group.
And then Sundays was like the

Speaker 12 real hardcore preaching.

Speaker 6 But the

Speaker 10 we,

Speaker 6 you know, we obviously observed, it was very, very richly observed in my house, I would say. My mom went all out with decorating in a in a style that I think is now called primitive

Speaker 6 folksy, you know, a lot of cinnamon and potpourri in the air. It was a big, it was a big deal at our house.

Speaker 6 It was a full, it was, it was enough of a transformation that my mom got in the habit of having my dad film the decorations at the end of the year before she took them down so she could remember how she got them up the year before the way that she liked them.

Speaker 32 That's great. I don't know why.

Speaker 16 Like I'm not a, I am not a decorate the house person generally, but there is just some energy around, what if I had things in the house that were only out part of the year?

Speaker 10 Somehow that makes it exciting to me.

Speaker 6 I can't get, you know, we do decorate for Christmas, but it doesn't, I've, I have started to feel that way with Halloween because I like like the idea of making my house scarier for some reason.

Speaker 6 That's very thrilling to me that suddenly there's like thrills and chills in an otherwise normal setting. That's fun to me.

Speaker 14 Well, I don't even really like to decorate the outside of the house.

Speaker 10 That feels like too much of a hassle.

Speaker 2 So I don't know.

Speaker 10 Like I'm just an Ebenezer Scrooge or just only having Christmas inside of the house and people walking by would have no idea that Christmas is going on inside.

Speaker 6 That's why you got to get yourself a 25-foot-tall Betelgeuse because you do that. No one can say you're not decorating.
It's true.

Speaker 6 Maybe it's know, put a garland up on him, a wreath, perfect for Christmas, perfect, perfect for every year, all year long.

Speaker 14 All right, let's jump into the music.

Speaker 10 I'm gonna start with the first song and look.

Speaker 10 I know I've sort of hyped up, like, ooh, I'm gonna have some surprising songs on here, but I do want to start with a bass line of like an old standard that I actually like.

Speaker 10 Uh, and so my first song is Holly Jolly Christmas, sung by Burl Ives.

Speaker 33 Have a holly, jolly Christmas, it's the best time of the year.

Speaker 12 I don't know if there'll be snow, but have a cup of cheer.

Speaker 33 Have a holly jolly Christmas.

Speaker 10 I just love holly jolly Christmas. Like it feels like an acceptable overplayed Christmas song.

Speaker 10 And I was thinking about it and I think part of it is so much of Christmas music is how much it just hits some weird nostalgia center in your brain.

Speaker 10 It needs to be something that's familiar, but not so familiar that it it starts, your body starts to reject it.

Speaker 10 So, you know, you're, for me, if I'm looking for like an old Christmas standard, it's one that I have heard thousands of times as a child, but maybe not hundreds of thousands of times as a child.

Speaker 6 Yes, I think that that's true.

Speaker 6 Or maybe ones that were background tracks for you growing up that you really only heard like as you got older and thought and were able to think of them as like discrete songs and you didn't like it overexposed.

Speaker 13 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 10 And it's funny, I also realized, I had a realization.

Speaker 21 I was like, look, I don't want to put something on like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

Speaker 10 I'll put on Holly Jolly Christmas. Not realizing subconsciously, Holly Jolly Christmas is in the Rankin-Bass Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer special.

Speaker 16 Sure, yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it's a classic.

Speaker 10 I, as a child, do you remember Burl Ives as Sam the Snowman?

Speaker 15 He has his weird signature Van Dyke mustache, an umbrella for some reason, and a bowler hat and a vest.

Speaker 6 It is amazing to me because that is a gener, by the time I'm seeing that right, it's a generation removed. So it's not a snowman that looks like Burl Ives.

Speaker 6 It's Burl Ives, a snowman who for the rest of living memory has now fused. As far as I, I don't think that snowman looks like Burl Ives.
No. That is Burl Ives.
As far as I know, he's a snowman.

Speaker 15 But even as a child, I feel like I was like, There's so much going on with this snowman.

Speaker 29 Yeah, there's like a lot of

Speaker 3 person.

Speaker 6 They're doing a lot of, there's a lot of paprika on the snowman.

Speaker 10 At the very least, I'm like, that is not Frosty.

Speaker 8 No, he seems to be.

Speaker 28 That is a different.

Speaker 10 They want me to know this is like a different snowman.

Speaker 21 Maybe Frosty is a little bit more.

Speaker 3 He's kind of cheeky.

Speaker 29 Kind of cheeky, you know?

Speaker 6 Kissing girls once for him.

Speaker 12 You know, kind of dog.

Speaker 12 waits for you kisser wants for me

Speaker 12 have a holly jolly christmas

Speaker 6 i also love the line i don't know if there'll be snow but have a cup of cheer what a wild thing for a snowman to say i don't know i don't know if i'll be there or not but please have a drink in my honor i might be dead but do not let that make your christmas any less holly jolly i think there is something fun about uh having a christmas song that swings, I think, is more fun to sing along to as a group because you're not going to get that light.

Speaker 6 Nobody's going to get off. There's a bit of signification.
You can have some fun with the rhythm and you can sing along to it. And it's fun to sing along to.
I think it's fun to hear.

Speaker 6 This is a fun rhythm, I think, also, that

Speaker 6 can break up the monotony of a lot of the Christmas music that's so much more down tempo. Yeah, I agree.
Cuts through the noise.

Speaker 10 Is this a song you would put on your own Christmas playlist?

Speaker 12 I might have it on there.

Speaker 6 I don't know. Actually, I will say that I watch that special enough that I would probably keep it to that special.
I would probably leave it within Rudolph. Like it's contextualized there.

Speaker 6 I wouldn't pull it out in isolation.

Speaker 26 Okay. Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 10 And I'm so excited.

Speaker 16 I'm actually glad we're getting off on a foot of not just pushing every song through to the playlist. There has to be a little tension as to whether

Speaker 23 these are going going to make it or not.

Speaker 6 Can I ask in this in this curation, and I think that like it's this is something that I will be honest about in my playlist.

Speaker 6 I feel like I need to not just like want to hear the songs, but I need to be able to defend it a little bit. Like I need to, there has to be something, some ego there.

Speaker 6 There has to be some bit where I hope someone's going to look up and be like, hello. You know, like, oh, what's this?

Speaker 3 You know, like, absolutely.

Speaker 6 What a savvy pick.

Speaker 10 It's not even so much for me the defending. It has to be, yeah, someone looks over and I'm smirking at them like, oh, yes, I did put this on my playlist.

Speaker 6 So as much as I love Holly Dolly Christmas, and there are standards where I feel like are that that can get to that level where it's like, you cannot argue with this.

Speaker 6 I feel like because of the Rudolph connection, I don't think it is like titanic enough to stand on its own. That would be my argument.

Speaker 15 I think that's fair.

Speaker 21 For me, it's really at the bottom of what I would include.

Speaker 10 It's mostly me wanting to have a standard

Speaker 16 and then having, not having one that's so bulletproof that's like, why am I even bothering to put this song on the playlist? You're going to hear this a million times all Christmas.

Speaker 10 Although this is a song you're going to hear a lot every Christmas anyway.

Speaker 25 Sure. Right.

Speaker 15 Justin, what's the first song you have for me?

Speaker 6 A couple of, I will say several of the songs on my list, and not from my personal list, but on my on my playlist, came from a

Speaker 6 really great Christmas music documentary. Have you seen

Speaker 6 Jingle Bell Rocks?

Speaker 13 I have not.

Speaker 10 I'm grabbing a pen as if I'm not recording this and will not listen to this numerous times in the future.

Speaker 6 But Jingle Bell Rocks, Jingle Bell Rocks is a great documentary about people who comb like vintage record stores looking for like oddball

Speaker 6 Christmas singles and like oddball recordings and talking about how Christmas music has like, you know, uh evolved and the people who love it and why they love it, yet, etc.

Speaker 6 And this song, uh, Five Pound Box of Money by Pearl Bailey is one that I heard of in that documentary of

Speaker 6 Jingle Bell Rocks.

Speaker 34 Hey, Santa Claus, you want to make me happy this year?

Speaker 34 Listen to me, honey.

Speaker 34 Give Pearl something that'll be of some use to me, like

Speaker 6 a five-pound box of money.

Speaker 33 Now, Navasal's gift is loaded with

Speaker 34 lots of cinnamon.

Speaker 34 See, whenever I get blue, Santa, I'm gonna think think of you, but at the same time, I will change the payment rent. You see?

Speaker 6 There are very few songs that I think are actually funny. I think there are very few

Speaker 6 Christmas songs that make me laugh.

Speaker 6 I think Christmas Kisses by Red State Update is one, and the other one is Five Pound Box Money by Pearl Bailey, which is a song where she kind of sings, kind of yells, and it's kind of like a wish list for Santa that is just money and not any sort of amount of money.

Speaker 6 But Pearl Bailey wants a five-pound box of money, which is, she keeps repeating and she says it as like somebody who loves that kind of like abstraction in comedy and the way that like things stop being funny and then start being funny again.

Speaker 6 She sells it so well. She'll like start singing the song in the middle and then bring it back to you.
And then if time allows.

Speaker 26 a five-pound box of money.

Speaker 6 It's really, really funny.

Speaker 10 Justin, I'm so glad that this is one of the songs that you're pitching because this is one of my all-time favorite Christmas songs. And I agree.
It is so funny.

Speaker 15 I love that it's sort of funny in like five different ways.

Speaker 10 Like the inherent premise is funny enough, but then also the way Pearl Bailey sings it, right?

Speaker 6 Like it's that delivery where it's where people used to have to do this.

Speaker 6 a thousand times a year in front of a hundred it's that craft where like it sounds cast tossed off and it is but it is like a hundred percent precise like every syllable of it is like so funny and so and so targeted and so in rhythm and like syncopation and and feels right with the music it's wild she's clearly a great singer and she sings a little bit but then like the the most weirdly the most musical parts where she's just kind of like almost feels improvisational but probably isn't where she's just like try me try me santa try me like the stuff like that i also love how single-minded she is about this five pound box of money money.

Speaker 10 It's so funny at one point that she's just sort of like something like, Santa, are you following me?

Speaker 28 All these things I'm telling you, and it's literally, she's just been saying a five-pound box of money over and over again.

Speaker 28 It's great. So, to review, I want a five-box of money.

Speaker 6 I cannot be more so.

Speaker 16 This is a throwaway joke, but I really love where she's like, a five-pound box of money.

Speaker 10 Really, how much could that weigh?

Speaker 3 It's really good, bro.

Speaker 6 It's really good. It also sonically, I think, is important because it still sounds pleasant.

Speaker 6 I think that's really so key for a Christmas song is that it can't give anybody in the room the urge to be like, oh, God.

Speaker 6 You know, like, and there's a lot of novelty songs where I feel like, oh, geez. Like, maybe grandma got run over by a reindeer generated laughs at one point.

Speaker 6 But I feel like at this point, if I hear the opening strains, I'm like sprinting for a knob. I can't just sonically absorb it.

Speaker 10 Yeah. Listeners, you need to know it's a hard no for me for grandma got ran over by a reindeer.

Speaker 14 I do not need to ever hear that song ever again.

Speaker 6 I'm so sorry to lead you into that so early.

Speaker 10 But yeah, it's so funny. And also, yeah, it's it's kind of like in that time.

Speaker 10 It's a standard or standard adjacent. So it sort of is in that time period that feels feels inherently Christmassy.

Speaker 10 But then it's like the humor of it and the delivery of it is so modern in a way that doesn't draw too much attention to itself, but is just delightful.

Speaker 26 It's really, really funny.

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Speaker 19 All right, why don't we move on to my next song?

Speaker 10 This is another one that might be a little obvious, but it's a contemporary classic that I just absolutely love.

Speaker 10 Growing up, you know, I was a teenager in the 90s, and that was one of the times when I was most trying to consume cool music.

Speaker 10 And I remember one of the bands that I tried to get into was this band called Low,

Speaker 10 which I guess would be described as like slow core or dream pop,

Speaker 10 you know, like beautiful music, but intentionally, like dreamily slow, where a song would be something like,

Speaker 23 I

Speaker 10 drove past, and like the guitar would do like one strum, your house,

Speaker 10 one drum beat, but you were dead. Like something like that.
That is my unfair impression of a low song.

Speaker 6 But I feel like if you spent, if you invested your own personal time trying to get into low, then you have earned the right to take one passing swipe at low, right?

Speaker 6 You did your time in the mines.

Speaker 10 Yes. And it's beautiful, but it just kind of wasn't me.
I couldn't get into it. But then, then, and I think I still have

Speaker 16 this

Speaker 10 cardboard EP somewhere in a milk crate in my basement. They released a Christmas album called Christmas, Christmas EP.

Speaker 10 And if I'm being honest, most of the songs were still too slow for my tastes, but I absolutely love maybe one of my top two or three Christmas songs of all time,

Speaker 10 Just Like Christmas by Lowe.

Speaker 10 On our way way from Stockholm,

Speaker 10 it started to snow,

Speaker 10 and you said it was like Christmas,

Speaker 10 but you were wrong

Speaker 10 wasn't like Christmas at all.

Speaker 18 For me, just like Christmas is such a breath of fresh air.

Speaker 16 Like it's got,

Speaker 10 it starts with jingling bells, which is always going to give you a leg up in it feeling like a Christmas song.

Speaker 10 It has like, I think what is probably a drum machine that sort of sounds like it's playing from a radio.

Speaker 10 It's got this beautiful organ and then Mimi Parker, I believe it's Mimi Parker's voice, just singing these really simple lyrics

Speaker 10 about, I guess, probably being on tour in Stockholm. It starts to snow.
Someone says, it's just like Christmas. And I just love that she sings, but you were wrong.
It wasn't like Christmas at all.

Speaker 15 And then it just goes on to, they go to Oslo.

Speaker 10 There's no snow.

Speaker 19 They get lost.

Speaker 10 They're in a, they're in beds that are too small, but they feel young. And then she just sings, it was just like Christmas over and over again.

Speaker 15 And it's just a small, simple, beautiful delight to me. I don't know, Justin, if you are familiar with this song.

Speaker 6 I had not encountered it before. It's really nice.
I like,

Speaker 6 it falls into this category of Christmas song that I think is really fascinating, that is like a longing for Christmas.

Speaker 6 Like it's a longing or a pining for something that you are currently experiencing. And I think there is something that, I don't know, that we like about that bittersweet sort of like...

Speaker 6 face pressed against the glass, like looking at the family inside while you're also the family inside, like you appreciate it more maybe, or like that you connect with it more because it's so wistful.

Speaker 6 But yeah, it's beautiful. It sounds

Speaker 6 really lovely. And I love, I like

Speaker 6 songs that are not Christmas songs explicitly, but are sort of like about that idea, you know, that are not just about Christmas, but, you know, sort of a more outsider perspective.

Speaker 10 I, I mean, it, it paints this whole tiny, it's a poem, essentially. It paints this whole tiny little story.

Speaker 10 This song is probably like 50 words total, and at least 14 of those words are just the word Christmas over and over again.

Speaker 10 But like you said, I love that it's sort of playing with this Christmas feeling of like, oh, is this Christmassy? Is this Christmassy enough?

Speaker 10 And sometimes it's not, but just how wonderful it is when something does just sort of strike you as it being just like Christmas.

Speaker 31 It was just like Christmas.

Speaker 31 It was just like Christmas.

Speaker 31 It was just like Christmas.

Speaker 6 My next song is Santa, Tell Me by Ariana Grande.

Speaker 17 Okay.

Speaker 17 Santa, tell me if you're really there.

Speaker 17 Don't make me fall in love again if you won't be here next year.

Speaker 17 Santa, tell me if he really cares.

Speaker 17 Cause I can't give it out away if you won't be here next year.

Speaker 6 Feeling crazy.

Speaker 6 I know that this song is extremely popular. And I know that Ariana Grande is pretty well known.
I think at this point, most people have probably, I would say, heard of Ariana Grande.

Speaker 6 I don't feel like we have had in the

Speaker 6 in recent memory, and by that I mean like this millennium,

Speaker 6 a lot of really great, like iconic top 40 Christmas pop, like where it is a new thing on the radio. And I can, and I feel like you can prove this pretty definitively.

Speaker 6 Like, if you were to look at countries that track this more rigorously, you know, you see how often the last great pop standard, which I would argue is Mariah Carey's

Speaker 6 All I Want for Christmas is You. I don't feel like we have had that caliber of hit.
And I would just submit that this song, which came out in 2014, is

Speaker 6 since All I Want for Christmas is You, the best like pop Christmas song. Now, bar of that is the tone of pop music has changed quite a bit, right?

Speaker 6 So pop pop music, whatever that means now, is not one that would fit in with a lot of like Christmas standards. It wouldn't make as much sense to make like Christmas pop music.

Speaker 6 It's just not a thing that's done that much anymore, I would say. So it's like kind of a weird dichotomy, but I think for me, it's beautifully constructed.
It's fun to listen to. Ariana Grande

Speaker 6 is doing the thing that she does with her voice. In a lot of these songs, it feels like a melodic, like

Speaker 6 there's a, it's like keyed up a couple of steps from other runs that she does in other songs, right? She's not like reinventing the wheel here. Yeah.

Speaker 6 But there's something about her voice that sounds like winter, it's clear, it feels like peppermint, it's invigorating and sparkly and fun.

Speaker 6 And she is a good enough actor that you really believe that she wants to be making a Christmas song, which I feel like is not as easy as sell.

Speaker 6 Like Mariah makes it look easy, but that ain't easy either.

Speaker 27 She's she's putting in her

Speaker 12 time.

Speaker 6 I just don't think there's a lot of great Christmas pop songs that get written and released anymore. And I think this is one in recent memory I wanted to highlight.

Speaker 23 Justin, it's so wild that I know who Ariana Grande is.

Speaker 10 I haven't listened to a bunch of her music like most people, though. I was delighted by her in Wicked.
And, you know, I've seen her on Saturday Night Live.

Speaker 10 She's very funny, but I haven't really spent much time with her music catalog.

Speaker 16 As I was listening to this song, I listened to it many times over the last week.

Speaker 14 I kept being like...

Speaker 14 This song sounds like...

Speaker 6 Why does this sound so like the run in the song that she does in trolls?

Speaker 10 I kept being like, I've heard this song reminds me of something.

Speaker 13 What song does this remind me of?

Speaker 10 And I think I've probably just heard this song a bunch of times and don't realize it. Like, I think this song is rattling around in the back of my head and I don't realize that I've heard it.

Speaker 6 Okay, so that may be true. I don't know, but I do.
Hold on one second, Arnie. Pause podcast.

Speaker 6 I'm going to send you a link to something.

Speaker 24 Okay.

Speaker 6 It's a song called They Don't Know. So once this loads, go to like 220 and start listening there.

Speaker 26 Okay.

Speaker 6 There's a run she does at about 230 in that song it's from

Speaker 6 the reason i know it is it's at a very important part in the trolls movie when the princess troll becomes a roller skating princess troll and wins the other the king troll's heart so or the the the not the troll the you know the grimmels the bad people

Speaker 6 But it is a very similar run to the run from Santa Telby, which is a very, very, very long one. That might be it.

Speaker 6 That may be, and I don't know if you watch trolls with your children, that that run would be in your head. But I don't know.
I can't accuse Ariada of cribbing off herself.

Speaker 10 So I don't don't know sure yeah i have seen trolls a lot of times uh and listened to the soundtrack it kind of came out at a time when my daughter was just old enough that it was like let's try to listen to some it was kind of like acceptable music here are my thoughts on santa telmi yeah

Speaker 10 on first blush i'm kind of like it's a no for me um

Speaker 10 partly because like i consider myself a poptimist like i really do try to like embrace all sort of music styles i do think there is a little bit of this production quality that does slide off of my brain a little bit.

Speaker 10 Yes.

Speaker 16 Right.

Speaker 16 So there is that.

Speaker 10 It just, it just kind of isn't one of my lanes. That said,

Speaker 10 the more I listen to it, the more I do get into it. Like I, the more, like, it's that kind of familiar.

Speaker 10 I don't know if I'm just purposely jump-starting my own familiarity with it to a point where I'm sort of like, oh, yes, this is a Christmas song now.

Speaker 6 I will say this, Arnie. It was one of them.
It was, it was definitely a creeper for me. It was one of those where, like, I did, I definitely had heard it like 30 times.

Speaker 6 And then it was like, I don't know, a realization just sort of settled in.

Speaker 3 Like, this is great. Like, I don't know if I've heard it.
I've never 50 times.

Speaker 29 This is actually extremely great.

Speaker 6 And I need to note that this is really good.

Speaker 32 Yeah.

Speaker 10 And I like, you know, look, I'm always going to love a Christmas song that's sort of about a strange relationship with Santa.

Speaker 10 This one is a little confusing to me. She's sort of like, Santa, you got to tell me if this guy's going to be, he's like a confidant.

Speaker 6 It's like, reveal to me the contents of this man's heart.

Speaker 29 Peer deep into his soul, Santa.

Speaker 10 If someone told me that this song was originally written to be about Cupid, I would not be surprised to learn that it was then changed to a Christmas song. Because there's a lot of people who are not.

Speaker 6 Honestly, Arnie, what you just said to me, I would be shocked. I would be shocked if someone was like, I'm sorry, Max, you cannot do a Valentine's Day song.
It is not done.

Speaker 6 You must make it about Christmas.

Speaker 18 She's just going through her drafts folder.

Speaker 15 I wonder if this Cupid song could just be Santa.

Speaker 17 Santa, Cupid, Santa.

Speaker 10 She says, don't make me fall in love again.

Speaker 3 Like a lot of it, like.

Speaker 6 But Santa does do that, right? Like, Santa makes kids' parents fall in love constantly.

Speaker 23 Yeah.

Speaker 3 You know, he has that ability. I wouldn't put a parent in.

Speaker 28 I would love if there was a Christmas song where it's like, Santa, stop making my parents fall in love.

Speaker 6 i would i would also arnie to suggest to you that

Speaker 6 this is not going to be a family-friendly listening experience until you fully endorse the living existence of santa

Speaker 6 it's really important that

Speaker 10 always really continue to affirm his existence as a living human man i'm going to try my best to keep this podcast as not explicit but also uh you know i feel like i do worry every once in a while we're going to brush up against the i saw mommy kissing santa claus conundrum that comes up again and again in these songs

Speaker 20 where it's just kind of like, hold on, I see what you're doing here.

Speaker 10 But I am fully pro-Santa is real in this podcast.

Speaker 14 Yeah. One last thing.

Speaker 10 One of the lyrics, she's like, I fell in love on Christmas night, but on New Year's Day, I woke up and he wasn't by my side.

Speaker 15 Is it possible

Speaker 16 that Ariana just needs someone to commit a little too fast?

Speaker 6 That's a very short window of maybe that's how long it took him to escape Didn't all through the ropes.

Speaker 10 Honestly, Ariana, maybe you shouldn't start a relationship at Christmas time.

Speaker 20 That might be the problem.

Speaker 6 My family is in right now, Ariana. I would love to hang out again, but my uncle Paul is in town and we had plans to go suit shopping.

Speaker 25 I cannot be with you constantly.

Speaker 10 There's also like, I don't think this is in the song,

Speaker 10 but is there like a she should be in love with Santa instead kind of implication?

Speaker 6 I mean, that's always, everyone knows knows that they wish they were in love with the Santa type, you know, generous, a little bit more mature. Yes.

Speaker 17 But, you know, it would be great if Santa was just like, oh, I'm trying to help you find love, but sometimes

Speaker 3 it's right in front of you.

Speaker 6 God, we are probably, this is probably the script of that Kurt Russell movie. I haven't seen it.

Speaker 29 It's probably.

Speaker 3 I don't know.

Speaker 28 You're probably right.

Speaker 10 I think there also might be some Christmas movie that is called Santa Tell Me and that

Speaker 10 might be exactly what it is.

Speaker 16 So here's the thing.

Speaker 10 I am going to for now say this song is not going on my Christmas list.

Speaker 24 Fair.

Speaker 10 But I have a backup list of songs that I keep going back to being like, I don't know, is this, maybe I didn't give this as much of a chance.

Speaker 10 I suspect in time this will migrate over to my regular list.

Speaker 6 I'm sure that will come as a great relief to Miss Grande that hope lives on.

Speaker 28 Yes.

Speaker 10 She needs my endorsement of one of the most popular Christmas songs of, as you've said, this millennium. Let's move on to my next song, which I suppose is a little bit related.
This is from 1983.

Speaker 20 The Weather Girls,

Speaker 10 who were a musical duo that also did the song It's Raining Men, released this song, Dear Santa, Bring Me a Man This Christmas.

Speaker 10 And have we got holiday news for you? You better listen. This is an open letter to Mr.
Santa Claus. Telling her all single girls back home.
All right.

Speaker 10 Bring me a maid.

Speaker 10 Bring me a maze this Christmas. Dear Santa, I need a maid.

Speaker 10 To be warm.

Speaker 10 Keeping me warm.

Speaker 10 I don't know if it's just the 1980s of it all that just fully gets me, I think. I love that it begins with them almost doing like a, hey, everybody, this is what the song is going to be.

Speaker 10 As if they're doing like they're, they're guests on a radio station and they're like, hey, this is the weather girl saying, listen to KXRL.

Speaker 28 They're just kind of like, we've got news for you.

Speaker 6 Leave the bed there.

Speaker 6 That's a classic Christmas song,

Speaker 6 right? Like there's that 10-second intro of like, let's talk about how we're about to do a Christmas song and then do the Christmas song.

Speaker 16 I know.

Speaker 10 Like all Christmas songs, I feel like there's like half a dozen ways that a Christmas song can start.

Speaker 16 It's either just saying the word Christmas a bunch of times, it's jingle bells jingling, or yeah,

Speaker 6 it should be called the chipmunk. Because what it is, is it's that Dave sets up like, all right, guys, son of a gun, we got to go record this.

Speaker 3 We got to record this Christmas song.

Speaker 10 It maybe partly makes a little more sense for this song because I looked it up. This was not released on a Christmas album.

Speaker 16 This was just on their first album.

Speaker 26 They're like, let's just do a single

Speaker 26 about

Speaker 16 how we need a man this christmas

Speaker 10 and so yeah it's kitschy but also like it's just legitimately their voices are great it's really fun it reminds me a little bit of my childhood in the 80s i think that that both of their big hits being about summoning men is

Speaker 6 pretty cool. Like, this is asking Santa to bring them a man.
It's raining men. It's just men coming from the sky.
Like,

Speaker 6 I think they should try meeting someone. You know what I mean?

Speaker 6 Like, just getting out there and just making some connections because they're waiting on the weather or Santa or anybody other than just like vulnerability.

Speaker 3 You know,

Speaker 6 putting yourself out there.

Speaker 6 I've been a good guy all year longer.

Speaker 6 Done my best,

Speaker 14 Also, this song apparently was co-written by Paul Schaefer.

Speaker 6 Freaking great. Fantastic.

Speaker 6 I also love, with the Weather Girls intro that you're talking about, it almost feels like a Christmas parody of their own song, which is one of my favorite little sub-genres of like, oh, you like that one big hit we have?

Speaker 6 Well, now we've made it about Christmas, so let's release it again.

Speaker 10 and this for me is definitely this is definitely like uh that conversation starter energy you're trying to get from your playlist where someone's like hold on what is this and you're like well well well uh you remember it's raining men and they also had this christmas song would you put either just like christmas or

Speaker 10 Dear Santa, bring me a man this Christmas, I believe it's called, on your Christmas playlists.

Speaker 6 So, Arnie, I want to give, I want to say just just like Christmas, that was, that's a really good, that, that definitely will go on the list. Beautiful, sounds beautiful.
It's wistful.

Speaker 6 I love a little bit of like

Speaker 6 sadness in my Christmas music. I just, and not because I'm a, I'm sad, but I like that, how that hangs in the background a little bit more easier than like

Speaker 19 something a little bit more upfront.

Speaker 6 So I would definitely include that. I think my problem with the Weather Girl song is, and this sort of the thing we haven't touched on here, is that it is six and a half minutes long.

Speaker 20 It is long.

Speaker 32 That is a very,

Speaker 6 very long novelty Christmas song. If it was Bing Crosby singing for six and a half minutes, you would probably say, that's enough, Bing.
We have other Christmas songs to listen to.

Speaker 10 I will say, as I was re-listening to it this week, I was like making a point of listening to the whole thing.

Speaker 18 And I was like, have I ever listened to this whole song intentionally?

Speaker 10 Have I just been delighted by the first minute or two, shook my head being like, oh, weather girls, you've done it again.

Speaker 13 And then hit skip.

Speaker 10 And I think of myself as one of my criterias for my playlist is you don't want to skip any of them.

Speaker 26 But that, I might just be lying to you.

Speaker 6 I'll be honest, I was hovering over the three little dots to add that song to my playlist just this moment. And the three little dots are right next to the runtime of the song.
And I saw that 6.30.

Speaker 6 I was like, well, that can't be right.

Speaker 3 Hold on, Ans.

Speaker 16 I can't dedicate that amount of time.

Speaker 6 I don't know. It's 6.30.

Speaker 10 But if it's playing in the background,

Speaker 10 you enjoy the first minute. And and then you kind of like, there's nothing just terrible about it being on the background for a while.

Speaker 10 So that's why it's on mine, but I totally, I think that is an incredibly valid argument for it not going on your playlist.

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Speaker 10 All right, Justin, before you introduce your next song, I just want to say, spoiler alert. I'd never heard this song before, heard of the song before.

Speaker 8 Absolutely love it.

Speaker 6 Winter Man by Clarence Reed? Yes.

Speaker 8 Yes.

Speaker 8 winner.

Speaker 8 I've been kind of expecting you.

Speaker 8 I have my woman here beside me.

Speaker 33 So there's no harm you can do.

Speaker 33 But I feel sorry for the people you've been catching.

Speaker 6 Winter Man by Clarence Reed is.

Speaker 6 It's not, man. It's not explicitly about Christmas, which is huge for me.
I love that.

Speaker 6 That feels so good in a Christmas playlist to have some things that are not explicitly Christmas, but are seasonal, I think is a great way of breaking up the flow.

Speaker 6 This is a song about how hard it is to be alone at Christmas, sung by someone who is not currently alone at Christmas, but has been in the past.

Speaker 6 So it's like, there's a real lovely like generosity of spirit with this song.

Speaker 6 It's like my heart is going out to people who can be like hurt by the winter man who is like the personification that he's talking about of like loneliness and how hard hard it is to be alone during the holidays.

Speaker 6 And it's a really, it's, it sounds great. It's got this like killer organ that it comes in with.

Speaker 6 And that it just sonically doesn't sound like hardly any Christmas music, which is like something I always try to get more like funk and soul into Christmas music because I feel like it's underrepresented and it's such a fun energy to like have in the playlist.

Speaker 6 But this is a great, great example of it for me.

Speaker 33 I feel sorry for the people you catch alone

Speaker 33 with no love to call their own.

Speaker 33 Cause only love can keep them out of your hands.

Speaker 33 You're mean old,

Speaker 33 you mean older man.

Speaker 33 You're cold, cold, cold.

Speaker 16 I absolutely love it.

Speaker 10 And I agree with you. I like the kind of like song about winter that is just Christmas adjacent enough to go on the list.

Speaker 15 Right.

Speaker 16 It's weird because I will sometimes get in my head about like, this song is not a Christmas song about other things, but winter songs really make it for me.

Speaker 10 And it also helps like a soul song for whatever reason kind of, there's so many great soul Christmas songs that that feels, starts to feel just Christmassy to me.

Speaker 6 Clarence Reed later performed as a guy named Blowfly, who was a sort of

Speaker 6 more of a filthy novelty kind of performer, which is also another one of my favorite things that you have these people who like split, split time between the different

Speaker 6 careers, but that's hysterical.

Speaker 16 Justin, I'm so glad you brought that up.

Speaker 15 I did only because I had, I was like, who is this guy? This song is fantastic.

Speaker 10 I did just the lightest amount of research on him and my mind was blown that almost the first thing I learned was Clarence Reed released three albums, but then as Blowfly,

Speaker 10 he apparently released over 25 dirty song parody albums.

Speaker 6 Yeah, he was the dirty, the X-rated weirdo.

Speaker 6 Reportedly, Weird Al has called him the X-rated weird owl. We don't know.
But anyway, it's a great song. I love that song.

Speaker 10 There's a lot that could be said about his songs as Blowfly, including Blowfly does XXX Miss.

Speaker 16 But I think...

Speaker 3 Which I doubt will make your list.

Speaker 26 Yeah,

Speaker 16 we'll maybe save that for another time.

Speaker 10 The last thing I'll say about Blowfly is his last album released in 2016 was titled 77 Rusty Trombones.

Speaker 6 So inspiring.

Speaker 6 Beautiful.

Speaker 6 I also wanted to highlight this one because it's one of those that's like, it's just a great song and you wish that it had been picked up at some point into something that gets like recirculated every once in a while because it's like, it's kind of buried back there in the annals and it's just like a great, it could be a standard.

Speaker 6 It's, it's a killer.

Speaker 10 It's fantastic. And like you said, I love it's similar to just like Christmas.
I love that there's a melancholy, but the song itself is not a downer.

Speaker 10 Like it's actually an upbeat song that acknowledges the complicated sadness of winter and Christmas.

Speaker 26 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah. It's less maudlin and more like, God, it's tough.

Speaker 26 Oh, that's tough.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it is. That's rough.

Speaker 21 Maybe Winterman needs to get in a relationship with Ariana Grande.

Speaker 17 That will, that's the song.

Speaker 19 That's what she needs.

Speaker 15 All right, let's go to my last song

Speaker 10 for this episode. This one is

Speaker 10 December by Earth, Wind, and Fire.

Speaker 15 Let's just, I'm just going to play some of this song.

Speaker 10 It might be familiar to some people.

Speaker 10 Do you remember

Speaker 10 between the fifth night and December?

Speaker 10 Love was changing her mind to picture us

Speaker 10 while chasing the clouds away.

Speaker 10 All right, Justin,

Speaker 10 I assume you are familiar with Earth, Wind, and Fires September.

Speaker 6 Yes, of course, I know Earth, Wind, and Fires

Speaker 6 September.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 what if there was another? This is a, this is a rare song that has a gust to ask. What if there's another month? You know?

Speaker 15 What if we changed one word three times in a song and it's just exactly the same song otherwise?

Speaker 10 Instead of, do you remember the 21st night of September?

Speaker 16 It's do you remember the 25th night of December?

Speaker 6 I want Demi to come back with this next Christmas.

Speaker 6 Amazing. Amazing.
Commit himself to doing a Christmas whatever you.

Speaker 32 Yeah.

Speaker 15 And I think part of my part of my affection for

Speaker 16 this original song September is yeah, Demi's great

Speaker 10 yearly videos for many years of the song September, which maybe I'll put a link in the show notes. If you have not seen those videos, you absolutely should.

Speaker 16 But I'm going to say, I actually don't put this song on my own playlist.

Speaker 10 This is mostly just a song. It's fun to share with someone, but you don't want to just like have it come up in your own rotation.

Speaker 16 This is more like, it's funny that this exists and they did this,

Speaker 10 but it mostly just makes me think how much I like the original and how it's not Christmassy in it.

Speaker 6 You may not even notice it at first. Like it may seem like, if this kit popped up in the playlist, it may seem like a terrible error.
Yeah, and then you got to wait.

Speaker 6 It's like, no, wait, wait, wait, hold on. Wait till the lyrics start.
You're going to love this.

Speaker 10 I also love literally one of the last lyrics in the song September is Now December found the love that we shared in September, and they just it's still in the song.

Speaker 6 I'm not gonna go back and it's got is that the was that the inspiration for the uh love actually uh the bill Bill Nighy song where he changes the one lyric well yeah, that's it just sounds better the other way.

Speaker 6 It's like yeah, well, I know, but we're just changing the one word to Christmas is all around me.

Speaker 10 All right, Justin,

Speaker 10 what is your last song that you're pitching for my playlist?

Speaker 6 Okay, this one I know is a stretch, and if it does not make it onto your personal playlist, I wouldn't blame you because it's kind of an oddball. But this is a song called Alone on Christmas Day.

Speaker 6 It was written by the Beach Boys. It was performed by the version I like is performed by Phoenix in

Speaker 6 a very Murray Christmas, Bill Murray Christmas special on Netflix.

Speaker 6 from love on Christmas Day

Speaker 6 Why the sadness

Speaker 6 When there should be gladness

Speaker 6 All you can do is keep moving on

Speaker 6 Town is mending

Speaker 6 Pain soon has its ending

Speaker 6 I know

Speaker 10 Tell me a little bit about why you like this song.

Speaker 6 My wife and I watched this

Speaker 6 very odd Christmas special, which feels like the after party to a normal Christmas special if you've never watched it. It's like Sophia Coppola directed it.

Speaker 6 It's like Bill Murray gets snowed in in a hotel and has a Christmas special that gets canceled, but is stuck at the hotel with him and Paul Schaefer and

Speaker 6 Buster Poindexter

Speaker 6 and a bunch of others, real singers and pretend singers. And like, you got Jason Schwartzmann pretending to be a Lovelorn fiancé and

Speaker 6 Phoenix, the band Phoenix, is in there as the chefs there at the bar that they get snowed in at.

Speaker 6 But they... Turns out when the time comes to like entertain, all of the chefs happen to know

Speaker 6 instruments and are members of the band Phoenix.

Speaker 6 so they come and they play this song when when uh they're in the bar of a hotel called the carlisle um which i i cindy and i love this so much we actually like stayed there one time on an anniversary because we wanted to like drink have a drink in this bar where this is filmed because it's such a like Christmas staple for us.

Speaker 6 But this is a song that they sing and it's another sort of like, I guess, sort of sad-ish Christmas song. Maudlin, but still kind of nice to listen to.
There's something.

Speaker 6 so this is like about that connection to the to that special for me because I love that vibe and that downtone energy there's something that I really enjoy about Bill Murray just like leaning in on the choruses I think is really funny um I don't

Speaker 6 I've listened to the original of this and it doesn't hit me the same way,

Speaker 6 but I don't know. I just really, this one is really, I put it on every list just because I really, I really dig it.

Speaker 10 The original song, is it a Beach Boys recording or maybe like the

Speaker 6 I don't even know that it was released as a recording? There's some weird. I'm not a Beach Boys, you know, I'm not, uh, but there's some weird history to it.

Speaker 6 We're like, it was not like a big hit for the Beach Boys or a standard. I think it might have been written by one of them and like records a demo.
I don't know.

Speaker 6 when you see some happy greeters

Speaker 6 It can make it better sweeter

Speaker 6 Still for real it's sad to feel alone on Christmas Day

Speaker 10 I have a lot of affection for the Christmas special A Very Merry Christmas.

Speaker 10 I've only seen it once I remember really enjoying it It's definitely got a subdued energy that is part of its charm, although I could see being a sort of turnoff for some viewers that are expecting it to kind of like

Speaker 10 heighten the sort of cheesiness of what it's doing.

Speaker 10 And part of what's fun about it is the premise is very cheesy and kind of all the things that happen are, but it's kind of played more straightforwardly, like in a way that I think is fun.

Speaker 10 I'm going to say I don't think I'm putting this song on my playlist.

Speaker 10 Which is a surprise to me because I do love the band Phoenix, especially their early stuff. If I Ever Feel Better Off Their First Album is one of my favorite songs.

Speaker 16 And, you know,

Speaker 10 I'm a man of a certain age, so I like Bill Murray.

Speaker 10 I think I like the song.

Speaker 10 I'm a little less into the sort of Beach Boys-esque song a little bit.

Speaker 24 Yeah.

Speaker 10 And the Bill Murray of it all, I like in theory, but I feel like if it's playing in the background, it's going to be too distracting to me.

Speaker 10 It's in the same way that I will rarely put a live recording of a song on a Christmas playlist.

Speaker 6 Except for that one, Bruce Springsteen, that's kind of

Speaker 10 the closest to it.

Speaker 16 Sometimes goes on and sometimes comes off.

Speaker 8 I wish there was.

Speaker 6 That's a great recording, though, too. Like the sound of that is awesome.

Speaker 10 Yeah, that one kind of falls into like, I definitely want to hear it during the Christmas season, but I'm probably not going to put it on a playlist that I'm going to put on shuffle, basically.

Speaker 16 So that's where I am with this.

Speaker 10 It's also like, I kind of can't, I kept going back and forth on on if I find the lyrics like charmingly simple or annoyingly simple.

Speaker 10 Like there's a little bit of a quality of, you know, like how they say like comedians, once they get reasonably successful, all their material is about flying on planes because that they spend so much time doing that.

Speaker 10 There is a little bit of this song that you feel like you can see it being written around Christmas time.

Speaker 10 in an airport, essentially, which isn't inherently against it, but there's just something about it I couldn't decide about.

Speaker 10 But I appreciate how this song is very special to you.

Speaker 3 Good.

Speaker 6 Because otherwise you'd be kind of a jerk.

Speaker 25 Yeah, that is true.

Speaker 18 And thank you for sitting through me being like, these are the things I don't know that I love about this song.

Speaker 6 Well, the good thing about it is, Ariana, I didn't do it. So I'm trying to be pretty, honestly, I wouldn't even be that upset if I had done it.

Speaker 25 It's just, I don't know.

Speaker 26 It's fine by me.

Speaker 10 Whether it goes on the list or not. And again, I'm going to, not all the details are worked out yet, but look, there's probably will be a link in the show notes.

Speaker 10 There will be a Spotify playlist of my growing list of songs from this podcast series,

Speaker 10 but there will be the growing list of all the songs, including the ones that I didn't put on my playlist. And likely, there will be episode-specific playlists as well.

Speaker 10 So, more playlists than you would ever really want to listen to.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 34 And you guys can cook too. Wow, you're going to be a real catch.

Speaker 10 Justin, before we go, first of all, thank you so much for being on the show. It's been a real treat just getting to hang out and chat with you.
First of all, chat with you about Christmas music.

Speaker 10 Do you have a tiny tip, a little thing that people can do to make the Christmas season feel a little more Christmassy?

Speaker 26 Oh, hmm.

Speaker 6 I would say that if you have the ability to make a gift rather than buy a gift, gift, it seems silly and it may feel kind of awkward. It may feel kind of embarrassing.
Vulnerability often does.

Speaker 6 But I tell you, it really does make the whole season feel a lot more special when you spend that time thinking about what you can make for people versus what you can buy them.

Speaker 10 Although I feel like my guess is, I don't know this for a fact, that you're kind of a handy guy.

Speaker 16 Like you can make things.

Speaker 15 What kind of things can you make, Justin?

Speaker 6 Well, I'm a woodworker and I've been doing a lot of 3D printing and I

Speaker 6 have been messing around with a lot of video games and electronics and stuff, making gifts with buying these little retro handheld emulator kind of guys and putting game collections on there.

Speaker 6 I think people will enjoy that kind of stuff.

Speaker 25 That's fantastic.

Speaker 6 Stuff.

Speaker 6 I like making baking is one that I do for people a lot. I have a snack mix that people dig.
So I'll make some of that as gifts or bake chest bars or things like that for people.

Speaker 6 So that's that's, I do a lot of that kind of stuff.

Speaker 10 Justin, that is incredible. And I now feel bad that my suggestion is get a seasonal butter dish.

Speaker 27 Speaking Speaking of how you could, you know,

Speaker 6 Arnie, in your defense, mine's hard. And you're saying buying a butter dish.
You know, I mean, yours sounds better to me because that sounds easy. I should have thought of the butter dish.
Dang.

Speaker 10 I would say, listener, if you don't have a butter dish, first of all, they're cheap and, you know, you don't want like butter in your fridge. That's ridiculous.

Speaker 10 But also, you can get like an old-timey looking butter dish and just bring it out around, honestly, all winter, but especially the holiday season.

Speaker 15 It's just a small

Speaker 6 to have a little room temperature butter up, especially too, because you don't want to wait. If you want to eat some on your bread,

Speaker 6 keep it on the counter.

Speaker 10 Absolutely. Justin, is there anything you want to plug before we go?

Speaker 6 I don't know if we got any more live shows. We might be doing a Candle Nights thing in December.
We usually are doing some sort of holiday thing there.

Speaker 6 If you go to McElroy.family, you can see all of our links to everything there. It's great.

Speaker 10 People should definitely check out Candle Nights and find if there's sort of ways to support. Do you want to just say a a word or two about what Candle Nights is?

Speaker 6 Yeah, my wife is a physician at Harmony House. It's a shelter for people experiencing homelessness in my area.

Speaker 6 And Candle Nights is a made-up holiday that my brothers and I invented that we celebrate every year to raise money for Harmony House. We have done a video stream in the past.

Speaker 6 We might do it live again. I don't know if we are doing it live again just because of the temporal laws in place here.
But

Speaker 6 mackerelroy.family would be the URL that I would look at for all of that information because I genuinely don't know.

Speaker 10 Well, thank you so much.

Speaker 28 I think that's great.

Speaker 10 Believe listeners, go and support that. That's great.

Speaker 10 As for me, I'm doing this podcast also for a good cause.

Speaker 10 Actually, I said that wrong.

Speaker 16 I'm doing it because I like attention.

Speaker 28 So thank you, everybody,

Speaker 28 for listening.

Speaker 3 I'm probably.

Speaker 6 I do have a just cause. Just cause I want to.

Speaker 10 I probably will edit in after this all the info you need to know about if there's a social media stream for this and all of that stuff.

Speaker 10 But before I cut away to that, I just wanted to say again, happy holidays, Justin. It's been a real treat.

Speaker 6 Hey, same to you, Arnie. And around here, we say Merry Christmas.

Speaker 13 This has been No Skip Christmas, created and hosted by me, Arnie Niecamp.

Speaker 10 You can follow me on Instagram and BlueSky at Arnie Niecamp, and you can email the podcast at no skipchristmas at gmail.com. Thanks so much to my first guest, Justin McElroy.

Speaker 13 You can find out more about his podcast, his books, and more at themckelroy.family.

Speaker 10 You can also get tickets to this year's Candle Nights, which is going to be happening virtually and in person this December. No Skip Christmas is produced and edited by Garrett Schultz.

Speaker 16 Thank you, Garrett.

Speaker 30 Speaking of Garrett, he picked this song to go under the outro, Oh Holy Night by the Bare Naked Ladies from their Christmas album, Bare Naked for the Holidays.

Speaker 17 I'm loving it.

Speaker 10 It's perfect right here at the end of the podcast. But is it going on my playlist?

Speaker 24 Huh.

Speaker 10 I'm going to say no.

Speaker 33 Sorry, Garrett.

Speaker 2 Speaking of those playlists...

Speaker 10 In the show notes, you can find a link to a Spotify playlist of the ever-growing Christmas list of accepted songs.

Speaker 10 Also, a link to the playlist of all the songs that didn't get accepted, the sort of Christmiscellaneous list.

Speaker 26 The Christmiscellany list?

Speaker 25 I'm still working on it.

Speaker 16 And a playlist of all the songs in this episode. What I'm saying is there's all kinds of good stuff in the show notes.

Speaker 10 Look at the show notes. We dropped the first two episodes of this podcast at the same time, so the second episode with Helen Zaltzmann from The Illusionist is already available for you to listen to.

Speaker 10 And then after that, there will be a new episode every Tuesday until Christmas.

Speaker 17 So subscribe to the podcast, rate and review, tell people, post about it on whatever social media platform you can stomach.

Speaker 10 But most importantly, thank you for listening.

Speaker 23 Happy holidays!