A Quirky, er, No: an *Eclectic* Christmas Mix (2024 Ed.)

[Video: Billie Eilish, Kate McKinnon, and Ego Nwodim recount — in cabaret-jazz style — their… unusual experiences with Santa.]

Welcome to this year’s installment of a favorite long-running series! As in the past, I’ve added to an existing Christmas playlist ten more tracks which I’m remembering fondly (usually from childhood) or have recently found… interesting, for one reason or another.

If you’ve been around here in past years, you may recall that in 2023 I switched to Spotify as my music player of choice, and I’ll continue with that this year. This carries the same advantages and disadvantages as it did then. Particularly annoying: an embedded Spotify playlist doesn’t offer a “shuffle” option to randomize the sequence of songs… (Come on, Spotify — get with the program!) Of course, you don’t need RAMH to listen to such a playlist… But you will need at least a free Spotify account. If you’ve got that much, you can listen to this year’s selections via either of these links:

• Just the ten new songs (2024 only)
• The complete list, AKA “Running After Santa’s Hat,” (2008-2024)

In past years, I could at least direct you to the old-style playlists which didn’t require Spotify at all. Apparently, though, last week’s crash, lockup, and recovery managed to nuke all the playlists themselves (although the posts in which they used to be embedded are still up — see the list of years in that box above and to the right, if you’re curious). And yes, I am mouthing emojis and dingbats to have just discovered that…

Anyway, here are the two embedded playlists, which don’t require a Spotify account at all — but if you have none, it will interrupt your listening with occasional ads and nagging to create an account.

2024 only:

2008-2024:

As ever, if all you really want to know is what tracks/performers were added each year, you can follow this link. Note that I was unable to add new tracks in December 2021 and 2022, while we were on our cross-country road trip during those years.

This year’s ten additions include two slightly, uh, offbeat? tracks: they’re both vocals (okay…) — but not in English. I’ve done this sort of thing before but not recently, I think, and the tunes are different enough to warrant bringing them aboard.

First, there’s “Il Est Né / Ca Berger” (track #3 in the 2024 list), performed by The Chieftains, with Anna and Kate McGarrigle’s ethereal voices. I recognized the opening of the tune immediately, but not its name. And of course — shamefacedly monolingual here — I couldn’t make out the words. But the track is apparently a mashup of two separate French songs: “Ile Est Né” (“He Is Born”) and “Ca [actually Ça, with the inflected capital C] Berger.” As far as I can tell, mostly from this page with the full lyrics, the complete title of the latter is: “Ça, Bergers, Assemblons-Nous” — that is to say, “Come, Shepherds, Let Us Gather.” So that’s that track, then: a solidly traditional Christmas carol.

Second, and at the other end of the sacred-to-secular spectrum, is track #9: an old favorite, “Santa Baby,” in Spanish. (The title itself is sung in English.) I confess: while I love the rendition, what actually drew me to the track at first was the name of the artist: the multiple Grammy-winning Mariachi Divas de Cindy Shea. (You can read more about the group at their own site, and of course also at Wikipedia.) I regret only that the performance, charming though it is, has none of the, y’know, stereotypically mariachi feel I thought I might find.

That wraps up the 2024 edition of this series. I apologize for the inconveniences which last week’s crash may cause for anyone, but promise I’ll try to correct the problem for future Decembers (however many I’ve got left!). Have a wonderful few weeks, everyone!

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Footnote: Sharp-eyed observers will notice that this post’s title departs from a tradition established 16 years ago… to wit, the word “quirky” is not struck through, like this: Quirky. For some mysterious reason, the gods of WordPress (the blogging software behind this and thousands of other sites) have removed the ability to style individual title words differently. I first noticed this a couple of months ago, when I could no longer italicize individual words — hence, my trying to retain both (a) the doubt and confusion surrounding the original word quirky (is it a criticism of something to say it’s “quirky”???), and (b) the emphasis, sans italics, on the more “polite” synonym: eclectic…