The Babylon Bee's Kyle Mann, Jarret Lemaster, Brandon Toy, and Dan Coats celebrate Christmas by talking about the objectively best and worst Christmas movies of all time, best and worst gifts, and answer a question from Ryan who is looking for Christian book recommendations. There's also time for a special holiday Sizzler Fact, Dan explaining how Charles Dickens might have saved Christmas, and a very special reading of the poem Noel by J.R.R. Tolkien! In the full-length subscribers-only podcast, The Bee guys sing Christmas Carols written by subscribers! This podcast is brought to you by our sponsors who you should definitely check out: Allegiance Gold Satellite Phone Store BetterHelp Online Therapy Meet everyone from The Babylon Bee at Bee Live in Fort Worth, Texas on February 24th, 2023!
It's the time of year to be of good cheer, unlike the rest of the year.
Va la and more on.
And now the Babylon Bee Christmas special 2022.
Welcome everyone to the Babylon Bee Podcast.
I'm hanging out here today with Jarrett and Brandon and Dan.
And of course, my name's Kyle, and I'm hanging out here with my buddies.
Treasure in Heaven is great, but it's not going to buy you a tank of gas.
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Or visit allegiancegold.com slash B-E-E.
How you guys doing?
Yeah.
Great.
Welcome to the only podcast that covers the news.
They're Christmas.
And Christmas.
Yes.
The only podcast special.
We're the only ones talking about Christmas.
It's true.
There's been a war on Christmas ever since Obama.
That's right.
And we're fighting back.
We're taking back Christmas.
We're taking back the pagan holidays.
Yeah, that pagan Christmas tree.
So we had an awesome Christmas party over the weekend.
Just a great restaurant.
Brandon, now you're the food connoisseur.
It was good food.
Was it as good a Sizzler?
That's an ask, but, you know, it was performed admirably against such.
Did you want to comment on your last thing that you wrote for us where you said that you're Sizzler?
I stand by it.
It's 100% true.
And it was actually better than Fleming's.
100% true.
Okay, he did not say Sizzler is better than Flemings.
He said the last steak he had at Sizzler was better than the last steak he had at Pigman.
It was significantly better than the last steak I had at Florida.
Thank you for clarifying.
Let's move on.
Let's not Sully Sizzler's name.
This is a sore spot or something?
Let's not Sully Sizzler's good name.
I'm not solding it.
You said it was better than Fleming's name.
We're like trying to caveat.
It's not a caveat.
I'm just saying like we were very curious when you wrote that Sizzler fact because you weren't here.
We wanted to know.
Let the fact remain, the Sizzler steak was better than my last Fleming steak.
Yes.
100% true.
Okay.
All right.
Well, anyway, we had a great time.
Much hot rum was consumed.
Yeah.
Did anybody have hot rum?
Is that a thing?
No, there was that hot drink, though, and it was very good.
My wife had it.
It had Earl Gray in it and the hot toddy.
That's what it was called.
I'm not a fan of that.
It tastes like something that you would have when you were sick, when you're sick, which I think is what it's for.
It's got like that.
It probably is.
Lemon in it.
It's got like lemon and tea, and then they like put alcohol in it.
They did have Saison DuPont beer, though, which is very son de pont.
Dupont.
It's pronounced Saison in America.
Saison.
It is quite good.
That is my favorite beer in the world.
I did not know that they had it.
I should have known because we, you know, we know the owner and he likes that beverage.
Yeah.
And I flipped over the menu and I said, DuPont?
DuPont?
And it was a good night after that.
You know, Sasson has a, or DuPont has a Christmas beer that they only make once a year called Abbec Les Von Beau.
No, I think they make it in June.
Abbec Les Von Beau.
Yeah.
So if you ever get a chance, that's a great beer to check out.
You can get them in the big 16 hours.
Yeah, so we were a little worried about the weather, but it ended up being a great night.
And it was a little chilly, but we had the heat lamps on and it was wonderful.
So we got to celebrate our Christmas a little bit early here at the B.
And you just posted a picture on Twitter, right?
Yeah.
So if people want to check that out.
Oh, maybe we can throw it up on the screen.
Yeah.
Everyone wants to see this picture.
You can see Adam's new wife.
I actually photoshopped her out.
Wow.
Oh, we didn't like her.
So it's just Adam.
Just Adam again.
Yeah.
Well, I had photoshopped him with Zoe Saldion.
Oh, that's what that was.
I didn't look close enough to.
But she kind of towered over him and made him look short.
So I didn't think it was appropriate.
He did request that we photoshop him in with a wife.
He doesn't pick to Zoe.
Yeah.
Well, she was in Star Trek, the Star Trek reboot, so that's why I thought she'd be a good fit.
Well, yeah, that's right.
Because he's, yeah.
But I don't know what his, I think he liked All Right, the one reboot, but I don't think he like followed the reboot series that much.
That's right.
And he's more of kind of a purist, isn't he?
Well, I don't think, I don't think he hated those, but I think he just didn't follow the new ones.
He's all about the next generation.
I don't think he's really into the new stuff.
Yeah, he and I agree on that.
It's much more engaging.
That was good.
That was pretty good.
Yeah, I think when they started using the Beastie Boys to defeat their enemies, I think Adam tuned out.
Yeah.
Oh, and we never issued a correction on that because I told you on the episode that didn't happen.
I did like it.
I did like the first one of the reboot.
It had RTD2 in it, and JJ Abrams and Andrew Kramer of Video Copilot.net fame.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, I can.
We all knew that.
Yeah.
I quite liked the reboot.
I did not care for the ones after that as much.
Correct.
Yeah.
I like Chris Pine.
I said correct as if it's an objective fact.
That is correct.
I actually really like Chris Pine as Captain Kirk, though.
I know that's controversial.
I thought he was great.
He was a great character.
Very good.
Yeah.
Well, guys, this is our Babylon B podcast Christmas special.
So we're going to be looking through the years of the holiday seasons, talking about Christmases long, long ago and our favorite Christmas movies and the worst Christmas movies that will spoil your holiday season forever.
But first, we have an email here from a guy named Ryan.
And he says, I love your podcast and appreciate when you bring on interesting guests.
You all show how well-read you are.
I was wondering if you could tell me some of your favorite books for a Christian to dive into faith and who God is.
Thank you for your time.
Well, I thought this is a good question to discuss.
God is a spirit, immutable, unchangeable, all-powerful, all-knowing.
That's a really long book title.
No, he said who is God.
He said he wants a Christian book about faith and who is God.
Well, but I think that's all a modifier of what book, like the book.
He wants a book that will explain dramatically.
He was.
No, you're right in everything you said, and definitely listen to what Jared said, Ryan.
But we also will pick a book for you.
So why don't we all talk about an intro book to Christianity?
Dan, did you have a.
Yeah, I already talked to Ryan.
I sent him an email back because that's what I get to do when I run the email for the do you try to intercept these and send Calvinist book recommendations before Seth sees the email inbox?
Yeah, totally.
Read this RC Scroll.
Yeah, that's what I did.
I told Ryan, like, well, if you want my honest opinion, I'll ask the other guys, but my honest opinion is just whatever you're interested in, find something that R.C. Sprawl wrote and read that.
So I gave him a list of books.
So, you know, The Holiness of God, that's a classic.
If you haven't read that, you definitely need to read that.
There's also Everyone's a Theologian.
That is like a systematic theology.
That's like an intro level, and that's really good too.
If I had to say something that wasn't R.C. Sproul, I might say...
Gun to your head, pick something that's not R.C. Sproul.
I might say...
Seth Dillon has a gun to your head.
Pick something that's not RC Spral.
Okay.
The Whole Christ by Sinclair Ferguson.
Oh, that's a good book.
That's all about union with Christ, that when you believe in Christ, you are in Christ.
And you don't have your own righteousness.
When God looks at you, he sees Jesus, and you are found in him and you are united to him by faith.
Amen.
And so that's, it gets into like the legalism and the antinomianism debate, like, you know, like assurance when you sin.
How do you get assurance when you like, you just keep sinning?
And it's, it's, it's, it's a really good book.
It touches on all those topics.
Good.
Yeah.
I've talked too much.
Who's who's next?
No, those are great recommendations.
That's really good.
I was going to say we have this collaborative email inbox where all of us can see all the emails that come in.
So I thought it'd be funny if Dan replied with all these Calvinist books and then Seth sees the email and he replies.
Disregard that.
Here are some others.
Disregard everything Dan said.
That's funny.
Brandon.
All right.
I'm going to go the complete layman's route.
And of course, the easy answer, but I stand by this and I love it.
Can I go first?
That was my pick.
I was doing it.
I know this is the easy answer, but it's the easy answer because it's just such a great, such a great foundational book.
It's very easy to comprehend, very easy, and delves into so many broad topics using in layman's terms.
And so obviously, that's my easy pick.
And I also have really loved what's it?
My utmost for his highest by Oswald Chambers.
That's a fantastic, fantastic book as well.
Well, I'll echo both of what they said, and then I will throw into the mix Spurgeon's Morning and Evening, a great devotional.
That's awesome.
A.W. Pink's The Attributes of God, I highly recommend.
Just goes through all the different attributes of God and very simple and easy to read.
Pilgrim's Progress as well, highly recommended.
It's more of kind of inspirational and kind of showing you how to live the Christian life through fiction than it is just laying things out, which is cool.
So, yeah, all of those, I think.
No, those are great.
All those are great.
How about the Bible?
Yeah, I was going to suggest John, maybe first, second, and third John.
No, I think I would like every time I talk to somebody about what books they should read, I always start with Lewis.
So like I always start with C.S. Lewis.
I think anything by Lewis, if you can read his entire library, then I like him as an author because you kind of- Except for that hideous strength, which is painful.
No, dude, it's freaking awesome.
Anyway, so, but you get a sense of who he is and what he cares about.
You kind of like with other authors, you don't, they kind of like focus on a topic or whatever.
Lewis infuses his personality in his work.
And I think that's one of the reasons why I feel like you feel connected to him when you're reading.
So it helps because it feels like you're actually listening to a person versus like just reading information.
And I like that.
And then, so I would focus on that, read everything.
Whenever anyone else brings up a book that's been written in the last 50 years, I'm like, if you haven't read the whole Lewis canon, then you should probably start there.
Let's do that.
And actually, you should.
I have not finished the Lewis canon.
I'm like most of the way there, but I haven't finished.
No, I think I'm at like book 39 or 40 or something like that.
But yeah, that's interesting.
I would say that.
And then I would say Dallas Willard's Divine Conspiracy is really good.
That was very encouraging.
I like him a lot because he talks about kingdom and he talks about how to live in the kingdom, which I think is a challenge.
Like, what does the kingdom look like and how do we live in the kingdom?
I like that a lot.
There's another like small book that I really always recommend too called They Found the Secret.
If you ever get a chance to read it.
Not to be confused with the secret.
Not the secret.
It's called They Found the Secret.
It's by V something.
I got to look at what the title, but it's a series of spiritual biographies about people who really understood how to be people surrendered to God, like people that were truly walking in the Holy Spirit moment by moment.
And God used them in really fantastic ways throughout their lives because they were willing to be submissive.
And that is kind of the act of sanctification that I've learned, like is the process of God, you know, gaining all these things in your life and then being able to use you.
And so they found the secret and focuses on people like Hudson Taylor and like missionaries and things like that.
So I would recommend those because it kind of gives you a sense.
This is what the Christian life looks like when you are indwelled by this spirit that you don't understand and you have to start walking with him and it's really in conflict with your flesh and there's a lot of stuff going on there.
So anyway, that's what I always recommend.
Check them out.
And I know we made the crack about the Bible, but just read the Bible.
Just read the Bible.
Just read the Bible.
Yeah.
Honestly, like if you're a new Christian, just read the Psalms.
I mean, the New Testament's obviously awesome for getting to know Christ and the new covenant.
But Psalms, I mean, you'll never get another book that just points you to the majesty of God and that he does everything for his glory than the Psalms.
Read a Psalm of Morning.
It's good.
For a while out there, I was reading a Psalm and a Proverb every morning.
And that was like, you got the practical wisdom and you got this magisterial view of God all at the same time.
It was very cool.
I would say read the Beatitudes and read John 14 through 17 as well.
Those are two things.
Beatitudes, because this is Jesus saying this is how it works.
And then he says it again right before he leaves.
He goes, this is how it's going to function when I leave.
So, yeah.
All right.
Well, we hope that's helpful, Ryan.
So go check all of those out.
Does anybody want to veto anybody else's choice before we move?
I'll add two more books.
They're all good.
Postmodern Pilgrim's Project.
Oh, yeah.
And The Babylon Bee Guide to Democracy.
Really encouraged by faith.
I don't remember.
Did we have any like religion jokes?
We had like devotional questions.
Oh, that's true.
We did have the life inspirational devotion questions in Babylon Be Guide to Democracy.
So check that out.
All right.
It's time for Sizzler Facts.
20 weeks ago, we debuted a new segment on the podcast, and it was met with overwhelming enthusiasm.
Sizzler Facts.
So buckle up for a special Christmas edition of Sizzler Facts.
So this year, you know, it's a rough time of year for everybody, sometimes, or for most people, or for some people.
Some people.
This is a rough time of year for almost everybody.
For everyone.
It can be stressful for everybody.
Definitely stress and business.
But for some people, it's worse than others, right?
Like maybe they're all alone.
Maybe it's their first Christmas.
They're all alone.
Yeah.
Maybe someone died, you know?
Maybe their dog, maybe their pet died.
There's a lot of that.
So if that happened to you, if you're alone for this holiday, Sizzler might be there for you.
According to their website, in the year of our Lord 2022, there will be 46 participating Sizzler restaurants that will be open this Christmas Day.
And we have a link that you can click on.
We'll meet that in the show notes.
So, you know, you can get choices and steak and shrimp and a salad bar.
And great help and great help.
Great service.
That sounds like a real Christmas miracle.
Yeah.
It's good that they're open on the Lord's Day, though.
And not in the SDZ, of course.
This is Sizzler Facts.
We should have a, you know, the Operation Christmas Child.
There should be an Operation Sizzler child.
Sizzler child.
Oh, Sizzler.
Where we send boxes of Sizzler to needy children.
No, to people in the Sizzler dead zone.
Oh, children.
How about children in the dead zone?
Children in the dead zone.
What if we made a, what if we made a sketch about how Sizzler can kind of save Christmas?
Like, what would that be?
Well, I think you just pitched it.
Somebody write that.
Write that down.
That's coming.
We go in Sizzler.
All right.
It is time for a new segment called The Babylon Bee's Top Christmas Movies of All Time, in which the Babylon Bee picks their top Christmas movies of all time.
This show is sponsored by BetterHelp Therapy Online.
So in addition to being an employee of the Babylon Bee, I work as a pastor at a church, and there's a lot of times when I have to encourage people to get counseling and help.
Life doesn't come with a user manual, and sometimes it's not working for you, and sometimes you feel like you're stuck.
The therapists are trained to help you figure out the cause of the challenging emotions that you're dealing with and figure out productive coping skills.
So I've gone through some really challenging stuff in my life.
I know that when I go through those things, I always have to go to people I know that are either wise or, you know, like my pastor at my church that I know have either gone through that or have education in how to deal with the things I'm dealing with.
And so I want to encourage you, you should go to BetterHelp online because it's an online resource for just for things just like this.
So get unstuck with betterhelp.com.
Learn more and save 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com slash Babylon B. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Babylon B.
The Babylon Bee's top Christmas movies of all time.
Are we going to do numbers?
Are we just going to talk about a few favorites maybe?
We never really decided on like how many to pick.
I thought we said five.
Did you guys pick five?
I picked three or four, so I think we're good.
Yeah, well, let's just talk.
Let's loose informal discussion.
We're all sipping hot buttered rum around the fire.
That's what we're doing.
Yes.
Yes.
So Jira, do you want to go first?
How many do you have, Jared?
Let me look it up.
I don't have that many.
So I have a couple.
I have like three or four.
Say one and let's go.
I'll go first because I'll go at the most.
That's good.
My, well, it's not in order.
So I'll just say, you know, classic elf.
You know, I have elf on my list as well.
Elf is a good chicken cheese.
It just had a lot of fun, fun moments in it.
I wanted to resist elf because everybody was talking about it.
And Will Farrell, great in Anchorman, some good Saturday Night Live bits.
Everything else that he's done has not been good in my opinion.
And Elf grew on me.
And eventually I did induct it into my Christmas movie canon.
I think Elf is peak Will Farrell for me.
Yeah.
Okay.
I'll go.
I just, my favorite, my favorite character trope of all time is the overly enthusiastic optimist.
That's like my favorite movie trope.
Movie character trope of all.
So Elf.
It's like Sam Greer and in the Babylon B offense.
Yes.
Jared.
Sure.
So if Jared was wearing an ELF costume.
You would love that.
You would just love it.
No, it's a classic.
It's a good one.
I feel like Christmas movies come out in like to say they've come out in the last five, 10 years.
It's hard for them to earn that classic Christmas movie status.
and Elf is, what, 20 years old now?
And it's kind of...
Oh, wow.
Is it that old now?
What was it?
02 or 07, maybe?
It's in that range.
It's a bit like Christmas songs.
Like, you don't find like the transcendent Christmas song.
It's very hard to find one that's been written in the last one.
It actually gets inducted into, except Mariah Carey.
That's the only one.
I don't want to love a Christmas.
That one?
Yeah.
Moving on.
I don't like it.
I hate that song too, but I'm saying it has been inducted into the canon.
Like, that's accepted, you know.
It's become a thing.
And then last Christmas, I hate that song.
Anyway, we're going to talk about it later.
Anyway, so who else has a Christmas movie?
How about Charlie Brown, the Christmas special?
Yes.
Good, short.
Correct.
You have Linus getting up.
My favorite detail of that whole thing is when Charlie Brown is like, doesn't anybody know what Christmas is all about?
And Linus gets up to speak.
And one of the small details I really love about that is he leaves a security blanket behind when he starts talking about Christ.
Yeah.
That's the most powerful thing I've ever, it's just so good.
It is really good.
You always wonder if they did that on purpose or if the animators were like, I don't want to animate this whole blanket thing coming up.
We'll just, we'll drop it.
I'm so tired of this blanket.
I heard it was on purpose, though.
So yeah, it was.
And I always like that they say they were sore afraid.
It was like, it's like the old, the old language.
He's like, and they were sore afraid.
Yeah.
There's very few Christmas movies that if they're on TV, I'll just stop and watch them.
And Elf is probably one of them.
And the Charlie Brown Christmas special is one of them.
It's short.
It's that piano music is Christmas to me.
I mean, I wanted to throw on there, and this is probably less popular, but there was the sequel to that.
It's Christmas time again, Charlie Brown.
Have you guys seen this one?
I have not.
It wasn't as well loved, but I think it's awesome.
And it was the one, I don't think we had the other one on VHS, but we had that one on VHS, and that was the one I knew as the Christmas one.
But there's a whole gag where I think it's so Charlie Brown is rehearsing for the Christmas play, and his sister keeps coming up, and she's holding a hockey stick the whole time.
And he has one line.
He's supposed to say, Hark.
And he goes up on stage and he says, hockey stick.
It's just the greatest gag of all time.
It's not as touching as the blanket in the book of Luke, but I highly recommend that one if you haven't watched this.
It's only like 12 minutes long or whatever those old specials used to be.
And you're so cool.
Okay, so I'm going to bring one that probably everyone has on their list, but Home Alone.
Yep, it's on my list.
Is it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I didn't put it on my list, but I agree.
We watch it every year.
My kids love it.
It's hilarious.
I remember I have a great memory of going to see that movie in the theater when I was, I don't know how old, but like I saw with my dad and I'd never seen my dad laugh that hard.
Like it was, he's a quiet guy.
He's kind of like all of you.
Like you'd never know that he's just, he's hilarious, but he's just kind of like super unyou.
He should host a podcast.
Yeah, he would be great.
Yeah, he's sort of like, he's an introvert, you know?
And anyway, so never, never saw my dad laugh that hard.
He was, he was gut laughing next to me.
And so I just love that movie.
And it's like, I remember my dad and my kids.
My kids all love it.
There's so many little moments when they knock over the statue, you know, like, you know, all that stuff.
That movie, Angels with Filthy Souls, like all that stuff.
So good.
You have to change, I feel.
Yeah, you need to change.
AC ain't in charge no more.
You know, like too bad AC.
Listen, snakes.
Yeah, snakes.
That's great.
All right, I'll get this one out of the way because I think this is going to be my most controversial pick.
This is a modern movie, and there is a little bit of some seeds of wokeness, but I still thought it was very enjoyable.
And that's the Noel movie, the Disney Noel movie.
I didn't see that one.
It's Anna Kendrick.
Anna Kendrick, yeah.
And it's basically...
I need to watch this one.
It's basically female elf.
So it's like the same overly optimistic character.
A little, little, little wokeness, but I mean, it's still very enjoyable overall.
I liked it.
All great.
And I think it's fairly clean.
I think I intended to watch it last year and we never did, so I'll have to.
No, well, I'll have to watch it.
I like Anna Kendrick.
Does she sing?
Possibly.
It's possible.
She is very funny.
Does it have jukebox hits or is it?
Does it have like pop songs that they sing?
There is at least one pop song in all.
Excitingly.
Do they form an a cappella group in?
You can imagine that they did.
Did anyone get notes?
I have notes.
I'll throw in the Santa Claus with Tim Allen.
Oh, yeah.
I love this movie.
It's a modern classic.
It's a modern another modern classic.
Was it in the late 90s or maybe mid-late 90s?
Didn't he recently say that no one plays Santa Claus like me or something?
Did he?
Yes.
That's like a very that's not like something Trump would say that's like something Jennifer Lawrence would say.
Yeah, the best thing that's happened to Santa Claus since ever.
Ever.
Nobody can do it like me.
That's right.
But I love the Santa Claus.
It's a great concept because the whole play on words is that it's claws and claws.
Something you don't get as a child.
And as a child, I didn't get Santa.
The E is kind of hanging off the end and you don't get why.
And now I was like, oh, there's a clause.
Santa Claus.
Yeah.
Great movie.
He's signed.
Is that the one where they're with Santos?
Where the police are saying something like he's saying that he's Santa Claus?
No.
The police aren't believing him.
All right.
No, his real name's Santos.
All right, Mr. Santos.
No, I was going to bring that up.
Is that it?
No, it's from Ernest Saves Christmas.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, which I was on my list.
I should have put that.
Is it on your good list?
It's on my good list.
The nice list.
It's on the nice list.
I just, okay, when I was a kid, that was the Santos.
Huh?
No, that's just that.
Nah, nah, his name's Santos.
All right.
It's the agent.
Yeah, the guy's agent.
It's like, Mr. Santos, settle down.
And it's like, yeah, Santa Claus is kind of losing his marbles.
He's getting to the end of his life.
Span is Santa Claus.
He's trying to find a replacement.
And Ernest P. Worrell helps him find a replacement.
Very funny.
And if you ever get a chance to watch it, Ernest is wonderful.
The guy that played Ernest was a very talented guy.
I actually, as a kid, you don't appreciate all the talent that he brought to it.
He had so many good characters.
His voice was perfect.
He was a really wonderful actor.
But you'd never know that because he's playing Ernest.
Jim Varney.
Jim Varney.
That's right.
He played the wiener dog in the Toy Story movies until he died.
He actually died of cancer.
But anyway, great film.
If you guys ever get a chance to watch it with your kids, really funny.
It's clean, too.
And the main girl in it kind of reminds me of Chandler.
If you ever watch it, I was like, watch it this year.
I was like, that girl reminds me of Chandler.
Who else has paused?
That's all I have.
I have some others that I like, but I parody.
Yeah.
I got some more.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the 1966 cartoon cartoon.
I agree.
I agree.
Oh, that's the music.
Heart agree.
Yeah, that's a very controversial too.
I do like the live-action one, too.
There's some funny moments here.
There are the Jim Carrey one.
I don't know.
Embedded in my memory is them force-feeding him pudding.
Like he's just in the throne eating all this pudding, and one guy goes, This is not pudding.
I felt like that was such a weird era where, like, it was weird.
They weren't doing CGI remakes yet, but they were trying these live-action things.
They probably should not have had live-action versions.
Wasn't Michael Marshall?
What's terrifying?
What's terrifying?
Wasn't he also?
Wasn't Michael Myers the cat in the hat also?
Unfortunately, yeah.
Because I remember they turned downtown Pomona into the whole like Dr. Seuss Village to film that.
You remember that?
Yeah.
Yeah, and I never saw that, but I assume it was terrifying.
No, I think the didn't Jim Carrey have to go through some kind of torture training in order to wear that suit too.
He had to like torture training.
What is torture training?
Yeah, you know, like if you become a Navy SEAL, you learn how to get torture.
And so he was uncomfortable.
He was so uncomfortable that he had to go through this like psychological training in order to wear that terrible suit.
Maybe that's what broke him.
Yeah, it's possible.
I don't know.
Something did.
All right.
Had to do that to me before they made me wear this.
Also on my list, I have Jingle All the Way.
Ooh.
Wow.
With Arnold Schwartz.
That's your positive list?
On my positive list.
Okay, did you not like it?
I don't remember much about it.
I remember being kind of cheesy 90s Christmas.
Oh, it absolutely is, and that's why it's good.
I don't think I ever saw it.
Arnold Schwartzen here plays a father who is trying to find the pursuit of the hot toy that's that Christmas season and hijinks and tzu as he uh goes from store to store, uh in, in desperate action to obtain this toy for his child.
I love these kind of movies, though that's a very simple premise.
It's one night, low stakes.
I'm just trying to find this super.
But there's all this like competition between him and it's like rat race or something like that.
It's a.
Those are great movies.
His uh, his child is played by the actor that was Anakin Skywalker.
Oh, Jake Lloyd, Jake Lloyd, Jake Lloyd, I thought it was okay, not his one of his roles.
Before he hung up the acting cape, yeah um, what else do I like you are giving a cape when you become an actor?
Do you have that acting archae?
Yeah, are you guys out of your list?
Turn in your badge.
Yeah, turning your badge in your cape.
To the Acting Union, to the FILM Actors Guild.
Go ahead sorry, go ahead.
Acting hat is that the metaphor?
I, I don't, I don't know whatever.
I think it's like the mask, or there's two masks, I don't know.
All right, so another.
Another one on my list is a Christmas Carol, the 1984 version with George Cotton, Ebenezer Scrooge.
I'm sure i've seen it and it is just a fantastic version of that.
If you've never seen it, you need to see the one with George Cotton.
He also played Patton back in the day um, so he's got this, he's got this grisliness to him and um, he's also able to like, just to turn it to like this earnestness.
Obviously, if you've seen a Christmas Carol, you know the story, but the way that he plays Scrooge, it sells that movie for me.
It's actually made for tv, but it's, it's a, it's a good, solid interpretation of it.
Awesome I, you know it's interesting.
So it's not on my list but I do love it.
The Jim Carry version of Christmas Carol is actually a great movie too, and I it's.
It's terrifying.
Completely Cgi yes, it is, but there was and it's a weird time in Cgi because it's like pseudo-real Candy Valley type right, just a strange like.
And you and you know Gary Oldman plays um Bob Cratchett and he's a young man, so like, and Gary Oldman's much older than Jim Carry.
So I don't, it was just a really.
Maybe they're not actually.
I don't know that that's true or not, somebody check me but I do like that and I think that was a good.
It was a good version.
Okay, it's a good version.
Does anybody have any more nice list?
I have one more on my list.
I've got two more.
I have one more on my list yeah, and that is Diehard television edit.
Agree, I thought that goes without saying.
I mean oh, but no one put it on their list.
It's a suit.
I was gonna say Die Hard too.
I don't know, did that also take place at christmas?
It did, and it was.
It was in Staple Stapleton airport, which was very close to my house growing up in in Colorado, so we were very close to big Diehard too.
So yeah, so you know, so you know.
And there's a tv edit where he says, yippeeka, Mr Falcon, I like that I watched growing up.
I like that better.
Yeah, it's a better, it's much more clever, it's just much more creative.
Dan, you had two more on your nice list.
I've got two classics.
Uh, Miracle On 34th Street, 1947 version with the renaissance.
It's black and white, it's just so classic, like every time, like Thanksgiving kicks around I, I put that on.
It's just like, it's just so, it's so good.
And then probably everyone, right, should say it's a wonderful life.
It's a live.
I was going to say, yep.
Yeah.
I mean, you can't get through the season without watching it's so bad that I really haven't seen it maybe since I was a little kid.
I need to sit down and do the work and watch it.
How long?
It's a long movie, right?
Like, it's like not quite two hours and a half, two hours.
When I was consulting with my wife on the list, that was one of the ones she mentioned.
I said, I believe that, but I haven't seen it since I was a child.
Maybe I'll sit down with the family this Christmas break.
You should.
Let's do it right now.
Let's screen it right now.
All right.
Let's cut to that.
All right, guys.
Well, thanks for joining us.
No, honestly, I love that one too.
Jimmy Stewart at his best.
Like, it's such a great Jimmy Stewart film.
Yeah, it's so good.
He's so tasty black.
It's just such a classic movie.
Yeah.
So cool.
But the Jim Carrey remake.
Yeah.
There's no.
That's right.
Where's the all-CGI remake?
Where's the Jim Carrey?
The Jimmy Santa Claus.
And he's dressed up as the Grinch.
No, last thing.
Last one.
Last one.
So there have been all these Hallmark movies, right, that have come out.
Correct.
And usually they're going to find their way onto our naughty list.
Correct.
But I would say the one that makes it to the good list, which I shouldn't probably bring this up, it's 12 Dates of Christmas.
Incorrect.
With Amy Smart.
Have you guys seen that?
No.
It's actually surprisingly a funny and good movie.
Well, it's 12 dates of 12 dates.
Mark, the guy that played on Saved by the Bell, Mark, what's his name?
Is that his name?
Can't remember.
Saved by the Bell.
Yeah, Zach from Saved by the Bell.
Okay.
It's him and Amy Smart.
So if you ever look it up, it's worth seeing.
Okay.
It's very funny.
I can honestly say that I have never seen a Hallmark movie.
My wife watches them.
I don't know if I've seen an official Hall of Mark movie, but I've seen Hallmark style movies.
Sounds like just cheesy.
Paint by number here.
Sure.
Yep.
Christina watches them.
Travis pitched in.
Oh, okay.
So Travis is not on the podcast, but he did say that besides Die Hard, television edit, his favorite movie is probably Christmas Vacation.
Okay.
Oh, that's a good one.
Yeah.
Good stuff.
I didn't grow up with it, so I don't have the same like cult classic feel that I love.
I've got nostalgia.
I don't think so.
But I thought it was good.
Okay.
Now we can move on.
Okay.
It is time for our naughty list.
So what movies made or not?
I'll start.
I love Santa Claus.
I hated all the sequels.
They did Santa Claus 2, Santa Claus 3.
You didn't like Martin Short?
No.
And then he was like Jack Frost or something.
And then the Santa Claus TV show that is now out on Disney Plus, I'm sure, is terrible.
I haven't.
I think Tim Allen, he might even be in it, but I'm not holding out hope.
So I'm going to say all the Santa Claus sequels.
I don't feel like Christmas movies typically engender good sequel vibes.
They don't need a sequel.
It's just like it's such a self-contained movie.
Christmas doesn't need a sequel.
Christmas.
Well, Easter.
Easter's the sequel.
But Easter is not Christmas 2, right?
Easter's Easter one.
Easter one.
Well, it is kind of like the second part of Easter.
The Second Coming of Christ is Christmas 2.
It's Act 2.
That's Act 3.
What's Act 4?
Wait, where are we?
Phase 4.
I don't know.
We're in one of the acts.
The Christ Cinematic Universe Phase 4.
All right.
Other bad movies.
Where is that Harris?
Is this the last movie?
I only chose one.
I only chose one bad one.
Yeah.
And it is definitively the worst movie that involves Christmas and should be excised from the Christmas movie genre because it is nothing but offensive to Christmas.
Sure.
Iron Man 3.
Oh, that's a good one.
No, that movie is Love Actually.
Oh, yeah.
It is a terrible movie.
No one should enjoy this movie.
If you profess to be a Christian, you should be ashamed of yourself if you like this movie.
Yeah.
I've never seen the excise.
I'm a little ashamed.
I've never seen it.
I know nothing about it.
So Bill Nye in that movie is really funny.
Bill Nye, the science guy?
No, the other Bill Nye.
The actor guy.
Yeah.
Christmas is all around me.
Come on.
That's really funny.
What's the elevator pitch?
It's semi-pornographic.
Okay.
And it imbues secular values, essentially.
I feel like you could have taken that elevator pitch to a Hollywood executive, and he'd be like, yeah, tell me more.
I love it.
I love it.
Let's make it tomorrow.
You have a script yet?
We'll have on.
And by semi-pornographic, I mean it actually depicts scenes of pornography.
Don't even vidangelate it.
And then they've taken a front to take his celebration of his birth.
And, you know, you just make something that's horrible.
Andrew, are there people out there that like Thanksgiving rolls around?
They're like, okay, put on love actually.
It is a favorite.
It is.
It is a fan favorite.
People love this movie.
Yeah.
And it sickens me.
Yeah.
It's awful.
Okay.
That does sound awful.
It's not good, but Bill Nye is very funny.
You ever just watched the first scene from the movie?
He's recording an artist.
He's a recording artist, and he has to record Love Is All Around Me.
What is that song called?
I don't remember.
It's like, I feel it in my fingers.
I feel it in my toes.
He keeps messing up the movie.
I don't need to watch the movie.
I could just enjoy the best part of the movie right now.
He's wonderful at that part.
The rest of it's crap.
So my movie that I picked for possibly worst Christmas movie is kind of controversial because a lot of people like this movie.
Oh, uh-oh.
Uh-oh.
And I don't understand it.
It's Scrooge with Bill Murray.
Oh, okay.
I hate that movie.
I saw you tweet about this, Dan, and you were very...
I got ratioed on Twitter because I'm like, this is the worst Christmas movie ever.
Worst movie ever made.
Yeah.
The worst achievement of Western civilization.
It's a modern take on the Christmas Carol story.
It's set.
He's like a TV executive, and they're producing the Christmas Carol show.
And it happens to him in his life.
But it's just so cynical, and he's so angry the whole movie.
He's so one note that even when he kind of comes around and has like the, oh, I believe in the magic of Christmas moment, he's still like the same person.
It seems forced, and it doesn't seem like there's any heart to the movie at all.
It's just, it's so cynical.
Oh, man.
And it's just gross and kind of like vulgar.
And yeah, I just, I just hate it.
I could see Bill Murud.
I could see that.
Yeah.
And I normally love Bill Murray.
I think he's a funny comedic actor, but Scrooge, it does not play well.
Yeah.
Usually I like him too.
He was much better in Zombieland.
He was very funny.
His magnum opossum.
He kills me.
In my opinion.
He kills me.
I also put on my naughty list the Home Alone sequels.
Not so much two.
The third.
Two was okay, but the third one was a different kid.
I think there was even a fourth one that came out like on Disney Plus or Disney Channel.
That's actually not a bad movie.
It's pretty funny.
It's terrible.
You saw it?
Yeah, like my kids were watching it or something.
I was like, you know, it was pretty funny.
Did you punish them?
Yes, I did.
I did punish them.
Cool for you, my boy.
Cool.
But I do think.
The punishment is they have to endure all the traps in the movie.
But maybe I'm just biased.
Like, again, I'm not a fan of Christmas movie sequels in general.
So it's like you're going to, why remake Home Alone?
Though Home Alone 2 had one of the greatest stars of all time.
That is true.
That shone brighter among the evening sky.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's right over there.
Then fizzled out in a burning, flaming defeat.
A great movie.
Oh, wow.
So great.
Well, okay, so Home Alone 2.
So I was going to kind of lump all of a particular genre, like of Christmas movie, into one thing.
And it's every movie where the spirit of Christmas, like Christmas is going to not happen, and you have to somehow save Christmas, which means you have to keep Santa doing what he does, which is give every kid in the world a present.
So all the movies that were on.
Everything we just like the Santa Claus.
The Santa Claus, yeah.
But I would say it's been done so many times.
Miracle in 34th.
Yeah.
It's like, oh no, Santa, the spirit of Christmas is dying, and we must, you know, like, what is the spirit of Christmas?
Like, there's all these things that we've kind of come up with in this weird kind of Christmas mythology that we sort of reinforce every time we make one of these movies.
And I actually do for like family and love and the spirit of the holiday, just as a kind of narrative.
The spirit of Santa Claus giving presents to kids.
I understand, but I'm saying that we kind of all recognize that, okay, it's the spirit of the holiday.
We get it, you know.
Right.
And he's, but it's magic.
It's all, there's always a mythology.
I see what you're saying.
It's the like we all have to clap at the same time and say, I do believe in Santa Claus or else he'll die.
Or he's going to die or like an elf will die.
It might have been Peter Kenny.
It's also tricky because like at the end of every Christmas movie, secular Christmas movie, I'm thinking, yeah, you're missing the entire point.
Exactly.
So it's like, it's true.
Should I enjoy this?
I mean, if it ultimately, if it's positive, but I mean, you know, you have this whole movie about this holiday and you miss the central tenets of the holiday.
Well, so the worst, the worst offender, okay, there's this animated movie that came out where the Santa Claus is like super buff.
Like, what was it?
It was like, and then the Easter Bunny was there, and there's all these pagan.
What are you talking about?
Oh, I know what you're talking about.
The Sandman was there.
It was like all the heroes, like tooth fairy type.
Tooth fairy heroes, but it was all pagan.
So even Santa Claus was pagan.
That's what he's called with.
The tooth fairy weird.
He was pagan.
So they really went 100% towards the pagan thing.
And so that really bothered me.
I was like, I hate that.
What was it called?
The claws or no?
Claws with a K?
I don't know.
I can't remember.
So I gotta look that up.
Awesome.
Anybody else have any naughty lists?
And did Travis have a naughty list?
Travis did chime in.
Let's see what Travis said.
He said The Grinch.
Can you say it like Travis would?
So the worst movie that isn't Die Hard 2 is probably Jim Carrey, How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
It's oddly sexual for a kids' movie, and it has a dark, sympathetic backstory to the Grinch.
Boring.
So I might have missed the sexual connotations as well.
I didn't.
You probably watched it on VidAngel.
Possibly.
There's like the town hussy that kind of falls in love and she's cheating on everybody.
Okay.
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Sat123.com/slash B. Best and worst Christmas gifts.
I'll go first.
I guess my best Christmas gift ever was my Nintendo 64.
Nice.
And it was just amazing to open that Nintendo 64.
I didn't do the Nintendo 64 kid thing where he's like pawing at the box.
But one interesting thing back then, you know, now I own 480 Steam games or whatever it is.
And it's like, as adults, we can kind of pick up the games that we want when we want for the most part, you know.
But as kids, like, I had the N64.
My parents didn't buy me a game.
So I just had the N64.
And I don't know if they didn't know that you need to get a cartridge or whatever.
So we ended up going to Blockbuster that night or the next day or whatever and renting Diddy Kong Racing.
So then I had to go rent that for like three weeks in a row.
And then finally for my birthday, which is a few weeks later, I bought Diddy Kong or got Diddy Kong Racing for my birthday.
And then that's the only game I had for a whole year.
Wow.
I appreciate the commitment your parents had.
You're like, well, that was your gift.
Well, they had like limits.
Like you guys could ask for something that's about $150.
That was the system.
So it's like, well, you don't get anything else.
So that's really cool.
But I always feel like with games, like I, I feel more invested in them if it's like, I earned my $30 and I bought this game.
Now that you have access to such a massive library of Steam games or you get them for free or you get them in humble bundles, it's like, I don't care about them as much.
When it's like, I had to save up my money and get this one cartridge and that's the only one I can play all year.
It was a big deal, you know?
You just appreciated things more.
Yeah, I think I only had Super Mario Bros. 3.
It was the only game I had for a long time.
On the NES, yeah.
Yeah, on the NES.
My favorite, I was 14 years old when I got my first 20-gauge shotgun.
Wow.
And it was a matte finish for turkey hunting.
And so anyway, I got that.
And my dad and I used to go clay pigeon shooting a lot.
So anyway, that was the best gift.
Like I opened that thing up.
I'm like, you gotta be kidding me.
It was like that in like a green flannel or something like that.
Nice.
Awesome.
Yeah, it was like awesome.
Tell us more about the green flannel.
Yeah, it was great.
So I'm just kidding.
I will say the BB gun I got when I was 10 for Christmas.
I still have it.
Like I go shoot it with my kids in the backyard.
That's cool.
I don't shoot my kids with it.
I shoot with my kids in the backyard.
That's fun.
So that's a great gift.
Is it a red rider?
No.
Oh, it's just a regular.
One of the best gifts that I received for Christmas was just a few years ago.
My wife got me a smoker for that's a good.
And I've been wanting one for years.
She knows that I spend a lot of my spare time just watching barbecue videos offline.
And so, I mean, getting to put all the hours and hours of study into practice and make delicious smoked meats was quite a feat.
That's great.
Quite a feat.
And we all benefit from those too.
It's true.
That was the gift that kept giving because we all got to participate in the game.
Amy says it was kind of like a gift for herself, too.
It was a homer.
That's what we call homers.
It's like getting your wife a vacuum.
Do you guys remember that?
Well, that episode of The Simpsons, The Simpsons, where he gets Marge a bowling ball with his name on it.
For her birthday.
I don't remember this.
Then she almost cheats on him with the guy that she learns how to.
I joke about getting the vacuum for the wife, but my wife only asks for stuff like that.
And I don't know if it's a trap or not, you know, it's like, it's definitely a trap.
My.
My Amazon wish list or whatever every year is like board games, board games, weird nerd stuff, video games, you know.
And then hers is like a trash can for the kitchen.
You know, because she just, I don't know, I'm like, do you really want that?
Or the thing is, you got to do that plus another clip.
Plus something else.
Something impractical.
Christina's always asking for practical gifts too.
That's what my wife does.
So the practical gift.
Like literally a vacuum cleaner, like a small handheld vacuum cleaner.
Like for the car, right?
I just want.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's my wife.
She wants the little small one for her.
And it's like a 20-volt like lithium ion.
Like that gift sucks.
Yeah.
I'm like, that's awful.
Yeah.
Like, I would hate that.
Please buy me a smoking.
That's typically me.
I used to like getting practical things, but my wife's philosophy and gifts is more in her language of love.
So she understands gift giving much deeper than I do.
And she says gifts are something for someone that they wouldn't buy themselves.
Yes.
Yes.
Or whatever.
Yeah.
Amy understands.
Amy gets it.
Christina's a gift giver, too.
That's one of her languages.
So she's much better.
We'll give it up for Christina too.
Yeah, Destiny.
Destiny also.
And for Destiny, and Chandra, Chandra, to the wives.
To the wives.
Here, here.
Here, here.
And Dan, you had a favorite gift.
My favorite gift that I ever got for Christmas was probably when I was in second grade.
I got a Super Nintendo with Super Mario World and Legend of Zelda Linked to the Past.
Oh, he got games.
Wow.
And I got games.
Yeah.
We were on the nice side of town, you know.
No, but I remember just playing the heck out of those.
Like, that was just the greatest, greatest gift ever.
It was so fun.
And good memories with my brother just playing Super Nintendo with my brother.
Just I'm kind of more of a PC gamer typically, but I do get the Nintendo consoles usually when they come out.
And there's something about a new console that's like this world of possibilities.
You know, you're just like, there's so many new games I can try.
And there's something about that as a kid where you get this thing and you're like, there are dozens of games that I could possibly get for this thing.
Maybe you only get Diddy Kong Racing, but in your head, there's a lot of possibilities.
Yeah.
Superman 64.
And I feel like when we were growing up, I feel like when we were growing up, video game technology was so it was progressing so fast.
Exactly.
Yeah.
It went from 8-bit to 16-bit to 32-bit to 64-bit.
So every time you got a new console, it was like, what?
It's 3D now?
What?
You can do this now?
Every console was something different.
So when they did it.
PS4 to PS5 isn't like this massive leap to my brain.
It's solely iterative now.
It's like incremental.
Yeah.
Yeah, they reached this point.
I remember when they first did the first-person shooters and stuff, like with Wolfenstein back in the day, those were PC games.
And it was just nuts.
And then that kept getting better and better and better.
So yeah, it was always exciting.
Always exciting to do something new.
Yeah.
More immersive.
Super 3D nose arc.
Yeah, that was a great game.
Well, Travis fits right in with us.
He said his best gift that he got for Christmas was a GameCube with Rogue Leader.
Oh, cool.
He got a game too.
He got a game too.
Wow.
These spoiled children.
Man.
Yeah, GameCube is great.
I mean, that's another great one.
Awesome.
I'm going to say props to your parents, though.
They stuck to their guns.
It's like you got your gift for X amount of dollars.
That's it.
And then you just got to learn to go without.
Yeah, so I did it Diddy Kong Racing for a whole year.
And then the next Christmas, my brother got Twisted Edge snowboarding, and I got NFL quarterback Club 98.
And that was our next set of games.
Terrible picks.
I love NFL quarterback Club 98.
I could still school all of you guys in it.
We found this.
I believe it.
We found this glitch where if you juke left and right real quick, your guy leaps completely across the whole thing and then you can just run past everybody.
So you just do a sweep run every time you can beat the computer.
We would win like 170 to zero every game.
Just a wonderful game.
And it was at that age, like even though you're blatantly cheating, it was still fun.
It was like, this is incredible.
Did we want to do worst Christmas gifts?
Did anybody have something in that one?
Oh, yeah, go ahead.
I've got one.
Throw my dad under the bus.
So my dad is, my dad's a great gift giver.
He really enjoyed getting his gifts.
But sometimes he thought so far out of the box that we didn't know what to think of it.
And one year he was so proud of it, it was a combination coat hanger/slash lint brush.
And we opened this up and we're like, what are we supposed to do with this?
But I remember because it was blue and had a lint brush on one side, and you open it up and it folds out like a transformer into a coat hanger.
And it was like the weirdest gift.
But it's become canonized as, you know, like one of the ultimate Christmas gifts.
And so we're, I want to find one of those and give one to him this Christmas.
That sounds like what you would get if you went to Brookstone.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, that was my dad's favorite store.
I love that.
It's probably from Brookstone.
I'm really, I'm bummed they're not out there anymore.
I don't see them very often when we go out.
We don't go to the mall very often, but if you go in, you would just go in and just be able to like play with everything.
It was always something cool, some new invention.
I just thought it was so cool.
Cookstone, a really quick aside, I'll tell this as quick as I can.
So, my dad appreciates gifts.
And so, you know, growing up, you don't always have money to get your dad good gifts or whatever.
And I was particularly appreciative of my father.
And I had a little bit of money.
And so I was like, I'm just going to spend as much money as I can afford on my dad.
And I got him a pair of Bose headphones.
And I was like, he's going to love these.
They're fantastic.
They're Bose.
And I gave them to him on Christmas.
And I remember him opening it up.
And he opened it up and saw they were Bose headphones and was like, oh, thank you.
And I was like, what?
What did I do wrong?
How did this perfect gift go wrong?
And a few months later, the Bose headphones are sitting on his desk.
And I was like, no, he was like, oh, you want to borrow them?
Yeah, they're really great.
So I borrowed them.
They were over on my desk.
And my dad said, and I went over to my dad's desk and I saw the Bose headphones on his desk.
And I was like, wait a minute.
Went back to my desk.
They're there.
My dad, right before Christmas, had purchased the exact same set of headphones and was just trying to mask his lack of excitement because he had just purchased the exact same.
It's very awkward.
Like, oh, I already have this, but I don't want to see it.
Exactly.
But that means it was the perfect, it was a great gift because it's what he wanted.
You nailed it.
Except he would have bought it for himself.
So you're a gifted gift giver.
I am not.
I'm actually terrible at gifts usually, but that was one of the high points.
That was when I chose the perfect gift at the perfect wrong time.
Yeah.
That's good.
I've given really bad gifts, but I haven't received a whole lot.
I gave at the beginning of marriage, I had no idea what to get my wife.
Like, no idea.
Like, I was like, what is that?
At the beginning of the day, girls do not.
Since the dawn of marriage.
Girls do not.
I do not know how to give gifts to women.
And so I went to Cole's and I bought her a bunch of t-shirts.
Nice.
Because that's what I would have wanted.
I was like, what would I like?
A bunch of t-shirts.
And so I went over to Cole's and got her some t-shirts.
I'm like, look, hon, I got you these cool t-shirts, you know?
Like, what kind of t-shirts?
Oh, they were like, you know, kind of like a Scooby-Doo font, like kind of, you know, cool.
What did they do fonts?
What did they shirts?
What did they say?
I don't remember.
Was it Scooby-Doo themed or was it just Scooby-Doo?
You know, like how the 60s, like kind of magic, magic buttons.
Did it say stuff?
That's what I'm wondering.
Like, is it supposed to be funny?
Are they funny to me?
I think they were kind of like funny t-shirts with like little saying ironic saying, or like a fake band name or something like that.
These are great t-shirts.
Like my wife's going to love this.
She hated them.
She hated them all.
She took them all back.
And I learned my lesson.
I couldn't shop for her clothing.
Clothing.
I had to go to the right stores.
I had to learn where to go.
Actually, I figured that out.
Well, I couldn't think.
I couldn't think of too many bad gifts.
I know there's been like ones where you're a little disappointed or you already have something.
Or, you know, as a kid, getting clothes was always the worst.
Oh, yeah.
It's like a wasted gift.
I won't say who.
Oh, right.
Socks.
One family friend without question.
It was always a polo shirt or slacks.
Yeah.
And you're just like, I'm a little, you know.
But I did think of a kind of an awkward situation where I gave a bad gift and we went to a Christmas party and we were kids, like we were teenagers or something.
And there was a white elephant Yankee swap type game.
And you were all supposed to bring a gift.
And we thought it was white elephant like bring a bad gift.
But apparently it was like everybody bring a gift of $20 or $25.
So we brought a bag of socks, like of old socks from our old used a plastic bag of used like stray socks.
Oh no.
And so we brought this bag of socks and I just remember kind of looking around and people are giving like gift cards and like little handheld tiger video games, stuff like that.
Yeah, and I was like, oh no.
And so we had to sit, we had to endure this like 30-minute swap game where everyone's trying to not take the pack of socks.
And I remember the kid who got it, he's like, he was like holding this and he goes, he came up to me and he goes, I got socks.
Did you know it was you?
I don't remember if I don't think he did know that it was being.
Usually those games are like anonymous, right?
You just picked it, like everybody comes and puts it in the pile or whatever.
He came to you.
I think he was like walking around like, you know, he was like, oh, I got socks.
And I remember he was trying to make the most of it and that felt really bad.
He was like, I could, you know, I could maybe use them and make some sock puppets.
So sad.
I'm just like, I don't remember if I did anything or tried to trade with him or something, but yeah, I remember that.
That's pretty bad.
Yeah.
Did you have a bad gift?
I won't say who, but when I first got married, somebody gave us.
I won't say who, but a particular Indian wife of mine.
No, no, no, no.
But somebody gave us a blanket for Christmas, which, you know, normally that'd be a thoughtful gift.
You're like, oh, we'll stay warm in the winter.
We have a new blanket for our bed.
But it was like a blanket with a big giant deer on it.
Like it was like for like a cabin or like a hunting lodge or something.
Like it was just this random deer blanket.
And I'm like, what am I going to do with deer?
Exactly.
So that I think that ranks up there with like just a weird What do I do with this?
And why did you buy this for me?
Like, why did you think?
Yeah, my wife sometimes gets, I wouldn't say bad gifts, but like sometimes if she really likes something, because people think of her and they'll think, oh, she likes Harry Potter or something.
So anything Harry Potter, they'll get her.
And you're like, what are we supposed to do with it?
You know, like, that's kind of.
So sometimes if you're a little too, if you lean into something a little too hard, people always get you stuff with that on it or whatever.
All right.
Well, that is the end of our best and worst Christmas gift segment.
Tell us what your best and worst Christmas gift was.
And we'll read it one year from today.
Now it is time for a new segment called Dan Splaining, where Dan explains things.
Hey guys, what's up?
Jared LeMaster here from the Babylon B.
I just wanted to invite you guys to be live February 24th in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas at the River Ranch Dockyards.
It's going to be amazing.
We're all going to be there.
You're going to get a chance to meet everybody.
We're going to get a chance to hang out.
There's going to be some live stuff going on.
Live comedy, live podcasting, question and answer time with Seth Dylan and Kyle Mann, if you're interested in that sort of thing.
Anyway, so get on down to BabylonBLive.com and get your tickets today.
The question is, why haven't you done this already?
I can't wait to meet you.
Dan Splaining with Dan Coates.
Christmas time, right?
So we're talking about Christmas.
This segment, I'm talking about how Charles Dickens helped save Christmas in the West.
So in the 16th and 17th centuries in England and in the West, in the English-speaking world anyway, Christmas was not really seen as a good holiday.
It was seen as kind of like a bad time of year when the working poor would let loose, just getting drunk, just gambling, being promiscuous.
And, you know, there was probably some element of caroling and gift giving and religious things going on.
But at the time, most people thought Christmas time, that's just pagan.
It's bad.
Everyone's just getting drunk and going crazy.
So when the Puritans got rid of King Charles I, they actually outlawed, they banned Christmas in 1647.
They also said it was the trappings of popery.
So they kind of tied it into, that's a Roman Catholic thing.
We're Protestants.
We don't do that.
So if you were in England at the time, you weren't excited for Christmas like we are now.
And then just for some context, this is about the time when the Westminster Confession of Faith was written up.
So if you know any Presbyterians or stodgy Reformed people, they're probably looking down on you because you're celebrating Christmas.
So do some of them still not celebrate Christmas.
Yeah.
We've got particular persons in my church.
I go to a Reformed church and they kind of go like, oh, why do we have a Christmas tree up?
So you guys have the, you're the liberals.
We're liberals, yeah.
You have the Christmas tree, huh?
Yeah.
So there's still that element today.
So the monarchy was restored in 1660.
They had an act of uniformity in 1662, which established the one true church of England is the Church of England.
That's the only approved legal church.
And they made Christmas legal again.
But Christmas itself.
Make Christmas legal again.
Make Christmas legal again.
I don't think they had the red ball caps back.
Baseball.
But even though they legalized Christmas, they said it is now legal.
You can celebrate Christmas in your own way.
It was not very popular.
So Puritans in 17th century New England didn't celebrate Christmas either.
So the colonists that came to the New World, they were kind of down on Christmas also.
After the American Revolution, there was also the added element of that is an English tradition.
We don't do that.
But it's a Christian and it's Catholic.
Yeah, yeah.
So in America, it was looked down upon twice.
So Charles Dickens came in the 19th century and he wrote a Christmas carol, which we talked about during our Christmas movie segment.
And he was born during a time of industrialization, the working class being very, very poor.
Debtors' prisons were a thing.
So like if you couldn't pay your bills, they just throw you in jail.
So that actually happened to Charles Dickens' dad when he was 12.
He had to actually start working because his dad was thrown in a debtor's prison.
So he had to go work in a boot blacking factory, very dirty, rat-infested.
And that had like a really big impact on his life.
And so in 1843, he wrote a Christmas carol.
And if you know the basics of the story, it's the miser Ebenezer Scrooge.
He's visited by four spirits on Christmas Eve, and they inspire him to amend his ways and be compassionate and have the Christmas spirit in his heart all the year round and care for the poor and care for his family members that he's estranged from and so on.
So that kind of captured the spirit of the time, mid-Victorian England, which they kind of had a revitalization of Christmas.
Like there's this, hey, like Christmas is the time of year where we have love in our heart and we have love for our fellow man.
And we remember Christ was born into the world.
And so he, I'm not sure if I would say Charles Dickens caused it, but he definitely captured it and popularized it to where nowadays in the West, in England and in America, we make a big deal about Christmas.
And it wasn't always going to be that way.
For a long time, it was very much looked down upon.
And now Christmas is celebrated.
It was more on the level of Columbus Day or something.
Yeah, yeah.
Or it's those Catholics over there.
They're doing their Catholic thing.
Yeah.
So now Christmas is a time for family, a time for friends, a time for presents, getting together and having a big meal.
And we might have Charles Dickens to thank for that.
We also have him to thank for Scrooged, the movie starring Gil Murray.
Well, that's interesting.
I didn't know that.
So thank you, Dan, for explaining that to us in the Dan Splinning segment.
And now it's time for a very special Christmas hate mail.
There is no hate mail this week.
This is a time for love, family, friends, and gathering.
So we will not be hating anybody, including ourselves.
Except for love, actually.
Except the movie Love Actually and Scrooge.
But we did want to conclude the podcast with one of my favorite poems, which is called Noel by J.R.R. Tolkien.
I think it awesomely captures the spirit of Christmas.
So we had Austin Robertson, our deep voiced man, do that for us.
Is that his official title?
Yes.
Austin Robertson.
Deep voiced man.
Well, Merry Christmas, everyone, from the Babylon BTU.
Thank you guys for supporting and following all these years.
And we're going to go into our subscriber lounge where we're going to sit by the fire with a non-alcoholic hot cocoa beverage.
And our actually, our subscribers came up with some funny Christmas carol parodies.
Yeah, we'll see.
Brandon can sing a few.
I'm going to get Brandon to sing a few bars of each.
Thank you guys for joining us, and we will see you guys next time.
Merry Christmas.
Remember what the season's about.
If you've not read the Bible, if you've not read the story of Christ, I encourage you to go read it.
It's worth it.
It's worth it.
Yeah, Merry Christmas, everybody.
Grim was the world and gray last night.
The moon and stars were fled.
The hall was dark without song or light.
The fires were fallen dead.
The wind in the trees was like to the sea, and over the mountain's teeth it whistled bitter, cold, and free as a sword leapt from its sheath.
The Lord of snows upreared his head.
His mantle long and pale upon the bitter blast was spread and hung o'er hill and dale.
The world was blind.
The boughs were bent.
All ways and paths were wild.
Then the veil of cloud apart was rent.
And here was born a child.
The ancient dome of heaven sheer was pricked with distant light.
A star came shining white and clear, alone above the night.
In the dale of dark, in that hour of birth, one voice on a sudden sang that all the bells in heaven and earth together at midnight rang.
Mary sang in this world below.
They heard her song arise or mist and over mountain snow to the walls of paradise.
And the tongue of many bells was stirred in heaven's towers to ring when the voice of mortal maid was heard.
That was Mother of Heaven's King.
Glad is the world and fair this night with stars about its head.
And the hall is filled with laughter and light, and fires are burning red.
The bells of paradise now ring with bells of Christendom.