C&M Advent Calendar

Welcome to the C&M Advent Calendar. Many members will be waking up each day to open a window on their advent calendar. Some will be purely secular - and just for the chocolate! - whereas some will have a religious element to them. I thought it'd be a good idea, and a potential activity boost, to incorporate the principle of an advent calendar here in C&M (whilst combining it with the spirit of the last 'big' event: the 30 Day Song Challenge).

Every day, I'll post a new topic for people to talk about related to Frosty the Snowman and culture and media, and you can choose to answer it. Unlike the 30DSC, however, you won't be able to cheat and look ahead at the next day's topic. I'll be revealing each one every day, up until December 24, so keep checking back at this thread for more Christmas goodness. People can pop in and out if they wish, but please try and stay on what the current day is. Just have a look around at similar posts and post accordingly.

I'll probably be posting new days at around 8-9am my time (UTC-0), so check out this thread after that to see what the next day's topic is. The backlog of topics will also be posted here so that everyone can have a look if they so wish.

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Dec 1: Favourite Christmas themed song?
Dec 2: Favourite Christmas themed film?
Dec 3: Favourite Christmas themed TV episode?
Dec 4: Favourite Christmas themed book?
Dec 5: Favourite Christmas carol?
Dec 6: That Christmas song you ALWAYS hear on the radio
Dec 7: Favourite Christmas food?
Dec 8: Favourite Christmas sporting tradition?
Dec 9: Least favourite Christmas food?
Dec 10: Favourite Christmas family tradition?
Dec 11: Best Christmas present ever? (Related to C&M ideally)
Dec 12: Worst Christmas present ever? (Ideally related to C&M)
Dec 13: Least favourite Christmas family tradition?
Dec 14: What about Christmas do you wish could stay for the whole year?
Dec 15: Least favourite sporting tradition?
Dec 16: What do you wish about Christmas would just WITHER AND DIE?
Dec 17: Least favourite Christmas themed song?
Dec 18: Least favourite Christmas themed film?
Dec 19: Least favourite Christmas themed TV episode?
Dec 20: Least favourite Christmas carol?
Dec 21: Non-Christmas piece of entertainment that makes you think of Christmas
Dec 22: Favourite Christmas themed TV commercial?
Dec 23: Least favourite Christmas themed TV commercial
Dec 24: Favourite Christmas memory

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And with that, we're off!

Dec 1: Favourite Christmas themed song?

Mine is the classic 'All I Want for Christmas is You' by Mariah Carey. I love the melody, the rhythm, the jollyness... pretty much everything about it! It's wild, melismatic to the max, and oh-so-Christmassy. Here's a clip:

Oh, this is a clever idea. I only wish I liked Christmas enough to be able to answer the first question. (Actually, that's a lie. I don't wish I liked Christmas more than I do). Oh, wait. I thought of a song.

Dec 1: Favourite Christmas themed song

Kissing the Christmas Killer



I love subverting Christmas. It's quite a nice song - soft and dreamy like freshly fallen snow - and then you listen to the lyrics and it gets creepy.

Ever since seeing Love Actually in 2003, this has been my favourite Christmas song:

I quite like Joan Jett's version of "Little Drummer Boy", it's probably not the most fun song to sing during Christmas but it is nice to listen to.

Normally these'll go up slightly earlier, but to stagger people into this, here's December 2's entry:

Dec 2: Favourite Christmas-themed film?

For me, it has to be the one-and-only Muppet Christmas Carol. One of the most faithful adaptations to the book, and also one of the funniest, it features great performances by the Muppets (and Michael Caine as Scrooge) while also being accessible and watchable by people of any age. I'm not sure if I've watched a more unifying film.

I have two favourite Christmas films, and they are both my equal favourites because of one common factor: they are set during Christmas, but are not about Christmas. I often find that Christmas movies are hard to take because they're so cheesy and delve into far too many Christmas cliches - wacky family, over-done Christmas light displays, 'surviving the holidays', etc... but these two movies, as far as I can see, submit to none of those. They're movies about love, which of course means they will succumb to a whole different set of tropes, but they're incredibly charming (and I'd even go so far as to say moving) regardless.

These films are Love Actually (2003) and The Holiday (2006).

This is a bit of a cop-out since it's more of a Halloween movie than a Christmas movie, but I love it so. And of course the movie I'm talking about is The Nightmare Before Christmas, which is still as good as when I first saw it.

Ack! The wonders of sleeping in have meant a delay in these posting! Bad mod, I know...

Dec 3: Favourite Christmas themed TV episode?

This one's actually fairly recent. Entitled 'Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas', this episode of Community has Abed imagine that everyone has become stop-motion animated. Instead of going along with it, his friends have him psychologically tested, but discover the true meaning of Christmas along the way. So, so good!



(Sorry for the delay, again.)

Oh wow! This one I honestly cannot answer. I watch so much TV and there have been so many Christmas episodes of all of my shows over the years that just sing Christmassy feelings at me. It's literally impossible to choose one.

I will take this opportunity to talk about one of the most recent instances though. Season 2 of The Big Bang Theory had a Christmas episode "The Bath Item Gift Hypothesis" which I really love. The final scene of that episode was the show at its funniest and it was honestly one of the most rewarding sitcom experiences I've had for a long while.

Dec. 3: Favorite Christmas themed TV episode?
The only Christmas-related thing on TV I've really liked is the classic Peanuts special, A Charlie Brown Christmas.

My favourite Christmas themed TV episode would probably be "False Positive" from How I Met Your Mother where it's Christmas and Ted makes that awesome ginger bread house as a Christmas themed snack for the screening of "It's A Wonderful Life" and all the characters decided it's finally time to do something meaningful in their life.