This post was originally published on 12 December 2018. There are some figures that loom so large in the public consciousness that it’s easy to feel like you know, or you can imagine, pretty much everything about them. Santa Claus is one of those figures. We owe our collective modern Continue Reading
Christmas In July 2022
This #ChristmasInJuly, I listened to the festive music of KT Tunstall
Generally speaking, if people hate Christmas music, they really hate it, and the idea of asking them, especially if they’re a musical artist of the standing of Scottish singer-songwriter KT Tunstall, to record any sort of Christmas music is anathema. Burn down the Christmas tree, throw the eggnog down the Continue Reading
#ChristmasInJuly retro TV review redux: “Tis the season to be murdered” (Hart to Hart, S2 E5)
“Oh Jonathan! What a lovely day. This is going to be the best Christmas ever.” And with those words, Jennifer Hart (Stefanie Powers), who by this stage in season 2 of Hart to Hart (1980) should know better, dooms the Harts to another festive season littered with murder and mayhem. Continue Reading
More #ChristmasInJuly tree decorations: The Mad Hatter (Alice in Wonderland), Bernard (The Rescuers), Pixar’s Pizza Planet truck, Stitch (Lilo and Stitch) + Charlie Brown (Peanuts)
Yes, I am at it again! Adding yet more ornaments to my Christmas in July tree which is, really, just my Easter and Halloween tree pressed into triple duty. The Christmas in July tree is nowhere as lavish as my December efforts but still, it’s fun to bring some of Continue Reading
#ChristmasInJuly movie review redux: The Night Before
Much as we might love our parents and siblings and crazy Aunt Phyllis and her 20 cats, it’s often the families we create throughout our lives of close, trusted friends that come to define our adult lives most profoundly. That’s certainly the case in Jonathan Levine’s The Night Before, a Continue Reading
#ChristmasInJuly festive animation review: Sonic Christmas Blast
Not being a game player of any kind, this reviewer’s only real contact with Sonic the Hedgehog had been the great pop culture soup in which many of us happily swim these days thanks to the internet where you can be exposed to a huge degree by characters and properties Continue Reading
#ChristmasInJuly Christmas album review redux: Warmer in the Winter by Lindsey Stirling
There are quite a few festive things that, right at home in the depth of a northern hemisphere winter, are almost comically out of place in a southern hemisphere summery Christmas. Take chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Or walking in a winter wonderland perhaps? Or even dashing through the Continue Reading
#ChristmasInJuly book review: Window Shopping by Tessa Bailey
Christmas is, however you choose to view it, a time of rebirth and redemption. The overwhelming message of Christian theology is that on this day, with the birth of Jesus as the saviour of the world, humanity had a chance to start again, freed off the sins of fallen Eden Continue Reading
Run! It’s the headless snowman! Getting scarily festive with A Scooby-Doo Christmas
Who doesn’t love a traditional warm and cosy Christmas? You’d think the answer would be a resounding “Nobody!” but in the festively besieged town of Winter Hollow, established 1764, everyone is afraid to celebrate Christmas, all too aware that when they do, a giant headless snowman – strictly speaking the Continue Reading
Merry Un-Christmas! I put 5 new ornaments on my #ChristmasinJuly tree – the Flintstones, Encanto, Mary Poppins, Mork from Ork + National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
Christmas is such a fun, wonderful, warm-spirited, cosy and nice time of the year that it really needs to be celebrated at least twice, right? Right! So, Christmas in July is increasingly a festive thing, and while it’s not as big a deal as the main event in December, it’s Continue Reading