{"id":29128,"date":"2025-12-16T13:23:45","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T18:23:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=29128"},"modified":"2025-12-16T13:23:52","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T18:23:52","slug":"a-quirky-er-no-an-eclectic-christmas-mix-2025-ed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/a-quirky-er-no-an-eclectic-christmas-mix-2025-ed\/","title":{"rendered":"A\u00a0Quirky, er, No: an\u00a0*Eclectic* Christmas Mix (2025 Ed.)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"intrinsic-container intrinsic-container-16x9\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/yMWTs0YT928?si=n9mt160jvZQnmLLX\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"smalltext\"><em>[Video: I suspect many of us have experienced such a moment in our gift-giving lives &#8212; a moment when the giftee&#8217;s face, and perhaps their very words, say, &#8220;Oh! You&#8217;ve given me a&#8230; WHAT is this you have given me, exactly?&#8221;]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">Per usual, let&#8217;s begin by putting the music itself at the top of the post (with some discussion to follow). Here are the ten selections for this year:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe data-testid=\"embed-iframe\" style=\"border-radius:12px\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/playlist\/1gmfHm4NrRcCd0z6ilvub1?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"352\" frameBorder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\" allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8230;and here&#8217;s the whole thing &#8212; up to 158 songs, totaling over eight hours, in this fifteenth year of this project:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe data-testid=\"embed-iframe\" style=\"border-radius:12px\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/playlist\/4aInnWz4Wi6Hjbq8wr74Q7?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"352\" frameBorder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\" allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"smalltext\"><em>[As before, I&#8217;m incredibly annoyed that you can&#8217;t shuffle the songs in an embedded playlist, like this one. But if you&#8217;ve got a Spotify account, you <\/em>can<em> open the playlist there&#8230; <\/em>and shuffle it!<em> To do so, click on the three little dots to the left of the &#8220;Play&#8221; arrowhead button; once in Spotify, just shuffle it to your heart&#8217;s content.]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, on to the annual nattering (heh)&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">Among the surprises in this year&#8217;s list, you&#8217;ll find Chris Rea&#8217;s &#8220;Driving Home for Christmas&#8221; &#8212; which (to my delight) describes an over-the-river-and-through-the-woods drive not in the United States, but in Britain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And there&#8217;s also M\u00e1ir\u00e9ad Nesbitt&#8217;s lovely violin solo, &#8220;\u00c9riu&#8217;s Dream.&#8221; This really stands out, for me, because&#8230; well, it&#8217;s <em>not a Christmas song<\/em>. The titular \u00c9riu serves (<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/%C3%89riu\">per Wikipedia<\/a>) as the &#8220;eponymous matron goddess of Ireland,&#8221; and I can find no reference to a dream of hers. (She apparently does feature in the dreams of other Celtic figures, though.) But, I dunno &#8212; the song just seemed to me to fit here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Perhaps her dream was one which included holly, mistletoe, and magical figures emerging from a misty, snowbound landscape? <em>I can hear that<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-drop-cap\">Finally, I must confess: my heart did not look forward to compiling this year&#8217;s list. The reasons are partly technological, and partly&#8230; well, other than technological.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Technology: yes, I&#8217;m comfortable with tech &#8212; maybe atypically, even <em>weirdly<\/em> comfortable with it, considering my age. But I could see the handwriting on the wall, thanks to my blogging platform&#8217;s age and increasing&#8230; inflexibility? A couple years ago, fed up with the laborious process of trying out yet another music-playing plugin when all the old ones were no longer working, I finally switched over to Spotify. Which does, yes, enormously simplify creating and sharing playlists&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8230;at a cost of its own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No, I don&#8217;t mean the cost of my subscription; I gladly pay that if that&#8217;s what it takes to share music here. The cost in question isn&#8217;t monetary, it&#8217;s&#8230; well, <em>political<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The truth is, yeah, 2025 is a very dispiriting year in which this leftie American blogger finds himself living. Politics saturates everything &#8212; ugly politics, politics interlaced with capitalism, politics soaking into the season like rotgut booze in an otherwise heavenly fruitcake. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And, it turns out, even simple pleasures like sharing music can, this year, stink of politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It turns out, see, that some of the advertising revenue which Spotify uses to support free Spotify accounts comes from the US Department of Homeland Security. Specifically, Spotify&#8217;s free accounts may occasionally feature <em>recruitment<\/em> ads for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, a\/k\/a ICE. (See <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/users-vow-to-boycott-spotify-after-streamer-runs-ice-recruitment-ad-10878788\">here<\/a> (<em>Newsweek<\/em>) for some background, and <a href=\"https:\/\/comptroller.nyc.gov\/reports\/letter-to-spotify-ceo-daniel-ek-re-u-s-customs-and-immigration-enforcement-advertisements\/\">here<\/a> for an official response to it from &#8212; in this case &#8212; the New York City Comptroller.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, you yourself should not experience these odious ads by listening to this playlist on <em>RAMH<\/em>. The question really is: should I and other paying Spotify subscribers be directing our money into the music streamer&#8217;s coffers?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don&#8217;t think so. But switching, at this point, means finding an &#8220;untainted&#8221; streamer which offers something like Spotify&#8217;s enormous library of music, so the playlist doesn&#8217;t need to be remade &#8212; yet again &#8212; with <em>different<\/em> music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All of which is a problem for me, not for you. So for now, anyhow, I&#8217;m just &#8212; one more time, thank you, 2025! &#8212; screaming into the void.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On that sour note, for which sourness I sincerely apologize, please do enjoy this year&#8217;s selections! And I&#8217;ll see what I can do about the Spotify issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Video: I suspect many of us have experienced such a moment in our gift-giving lives &#8212; a moment when the giftee&#8217;s face, and perhaps their very words, say, &#8220;Oh! You&#8217;ve given me a&#8230; WHAT is this you have given me, exactly?&#8221;] Per usual, let&#8217;s begin by putting the music itself at the top of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"An annual tradition at 'Running After My Hat' now with a nominal 158 songs, for 8 hours' music. Enjoy!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3694,96,74],"tags":[6241,6242,27,845,846,2131,2574,2616,3082,5836,6234,6235,6237,6238,6239,6240],"class_list":{"0":"post-29128","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-quirky-eclectic-christmas-mix","8":"category-politics-in-the-news","9":"category-music","10":"tag-trans-siberian-orchestra","11":"tag-salt-of-the-sound","12":"tag-christmas","13":"tag-christmas-music","14":"tag-playlists","15":"tag-eclectic-christmas-music","16":"tag-sophie-milman","17":"tag-norah-jones","18":"tag-mitch-miller","19":"tag-spotify","20":"tag-garfunkel-and-oates","21":"tag-mairead-nesbitt-2","22":"tag-chris-rea","23":"tag-mannheim-steamroller","24":"tag-the-beach-boys","25":"tag-the-irish-rovers","26":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Screenshot-from-2025-12-16-12-24-52.png?fit=935%2C555&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-7zO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29128"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29147,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29128\/revisions\/29147"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}