The Juxe: Hark! Part Two

Just a few more Christmas favorites before the holiday comes.

Baby It’s Cold Outside from Neptune’s Daughter

Baby it’s Cold Outside isn’t really a Christmas song. Like, “Let it Snow,” it’s just a song about wanting to get freaky when it’s cold out.

It’s hard to beat this version of the song, from the film where it originally became famous, Neptune’s Daughter in 1949.

My favorite take-off of this song is this sketch from Saturday Night Live featuring Jimmy Fallon and Cecily Strong. It never fails to crack my shit up.

I Wish It Was Christmas Today by Julian Casablancas

Speaking of Saturday Night Live, Horatio Sanz made it a tradition for a number of years to sing an intentionally dumb Christmas song called “I Wish It Was Christmas Today,” on the show.

Now, I wouldn’t ever listen to that version of the song just as an audio track. It really only works if you can watch the stupidity that surrounds it. But Julian Casablancas from the Strokes released a surprisingly listenable version of the song that does stand on its own.

Christmas Party by Dr. Dog

This 60’s-inpsired, upbeat, lo-fi Christmas song, is a pretty good encapsulation of my personal esthetic. This year really has me missing gatherings of even just, like, 15-20 people. Hopefully in the not-too-distant future things will return to normal and in 2021 there will be good old fashioned Christmas parties again.

8 Hours of Department Store Christmas Music

This isn’t even something I realized I missed. This is the sound of wandering through a department store at Christmastime when I was a kid. These days, I think most stores play a more modern mix of songs. But I wouldn’t really know because there aren’t that many department stores left.

This might be good background music for your Christmas day celebration.

Merry Xmas Everybody by Slade

I’ll leave you with this modern Christmas classic. While this song reached #1 in the UK (and continues to chart most Christmas seasons) it never cracked the charts in the US. So this isn’t something I heard regularly until a decade or so ago. It’s now the song I blast once all the presents are open, while we’re cleaning up the torn wrapping paper and organizing our gifts.

Tying certain songs/albums to particular moments of your celebration (e.g., an album you listen to after the kids have gone to bed on Christmas eve, an album you listen to during Christmas morning breakfast, and album you listen to while you decorate the tree) is an easy way to create a sense of tradition. (And that goes beyond Christmas.)