Jeffrey’s Gallimaufry 12.22.23
Scarry Christmas!
It’s the last Gallimaufry of the year! I’m going to take next week off to do the usual holiday things - overeat, sit in traffic, stress out about the work I’m not doing, etc. But in the meantime, here’s a grab bag of Christmas treats to tide you over until next year.
The image above come from one of my favorite vintage Christmas books in our collection. We found this oldie at a used bookstore in Vermont many years back - The Animals’ Merry Christmas.
Richard Scarry’s illustrations date from his earlier phase, when he used a style that precedes his more iconic pen/ink/watercolor Busytown images, with the animals slightly more animal-y than they’d later become.
The real star here, though, is the printing - every page is suffused with reflective, golden ink that really makes it pop. It’s very difficult to do it justice in photography, but here are a few samples.
Speaking of popping, the pop-up Santa on the front endpapers is delightfully dramatic, but also disturbing on a number of levels. In addition to being a little crotch-forward, it also begs the question - can his hip bones actually DO that?
I didn’t have it in me to do a list of bad Christmas specials like the bad Halloween list I did in October. Christmas specials are a wider field, and while I have a sentimental attachment to the holiday, it doesn’t hit me in the marrow quite the same as Halloween.
That said, there’s a whole bunch of weird stuff out there. The other day we watched one I remember seeing once or twice as a kid, a very weird Canadian (of course!) special from 1977 called A Cosmic Christmas. It’s an odd riff on the Three Wise Men, and this kid has a goose for a pet who almost gets eaten by a bully until the bully falls into the ice and everyone blames him but then they have an epiphany about capitalism and instantly change their minds. Seasonal!
Okay, I guess I can’t help myself, but two other things. For years I had remembered there was a character in Cosmic Christmas named Bouncing Baby Boo, who my sister and I thought was cute and funny and spent a few weeks imitating by jumping around the house. Turns out that character is from a different special altogether, though this one also involves aliens. Anyone remember Wacky Wall Walkers, those little sticky rubber octopuses that were a wild fad for a hot second in 1983? Well, they were popular enough to have their own Christmas special - Deck the Halls with Wacky Walls - and apparently that’s where Bouncing Baby Boo came from:
FInally, speaking of weird Canadian stuff, here’s another one called The Gift of Winter, from 1974. A story about a world starved for snow, it manages to be weirdly non-denominational and indirectly focused on climate change way before its time. Check it out for the heavily stylized character designs and voices by a young Gilda Radner and Dan Ackroyd. Since it’s more about winter than the holidays it’ll keep for a few weeks. (Also note that there was a Halloween sequel a few year’s later called Witch’s Night Out - which I didn’t include on my Halloween list because it’s kinda good and I feel like more people already know about it.) A better print of this one is up on Tubi.
I got Instagram-targeted with the Stax Christmas album and decided I had to have it on vinyl. (You can also listen to it on Spotify and YouTube.)
It’s a delightful collection of mostly original soul tracks from the iconic Memphis label, recorded from the ‘60s through the ‘80s. Highlights for me are Otis Redding’s “Merry Christmas Baby,” an organ-driven instrumental “Winter Wonderland” from Booker T. & the M.G.s, and Albert King’s “Santa Claus Wants Some Lovin’,” which features the immortal couplet: “I don't want no turkey, I don't care nothin' 'bout no cake / I want you to come in here, woman, before them children wake.” Santa!
Anyway, it makes for a great change of pace from the standard seasonal fare - give it a spin this weekend!
And that’s a wrap for 2023. Thanks for following me through the first year of The Jeff Stream - I can’t say I’m especially looking forward to 2024, but hopefully well all find some good in it!