Christmas Links #6

How to create a £500 luxury hamper on the cheap:
"Perhaps the most eye-catching is Asda selling a whole leg of Serrano ham, complete with a stand to carve it on, for £39. The cheapest you can find a basic leg from the upmarket Spanish delicatessen, Brindisa, is £115, though if you really want to splash out, Fortnum & Mason is selling an Iberico ham for £1,950. It comes with its own DNA certificate. Yes, really. For that price you could probably salt, cure and serve up Peppa Pig."

This American Life Holiday Sale:
"Hello, friends. We have some new merchandise and sale items available for your holiday shopping needs. The perfect gifts for people who like receiving things!"

Christmas tree growers get ready for the fir to fly:
"Rob Morgan and family at Poundffald farm on the Gower, near Swansea, who grow about 350,000 trees on 120 hectares (300 acres) – including one destined for 10 Downing Street – have been waiting for this moment for months. Last weekend they had a sense of what was coming when half-mile traffic jams built up in their village of Three Crosses as people queued to get to their farm."

Electronic Christmas cards on Tomorrow's World in 1982:
"Peter Macann looks at the bleeping musical cards of the future in this clip from the classic BBC show."

J.K. Rowling’s Christmas Present to You Is More Harry Potter Stories:
"The author announced the new stories in a newsletter to Pottermore members, explaining that each new installment would be posted at 1 pm GMT (8am ET) every day beginning Dec. 12. The email promises “wonderful writing by J.K. Rowling in Moments from Half-Blood Prince, shiny gold Galleons and even a new potion or two.”"

Yule Log 2.0:
"Yule Log 2.0 is back for a second season! Composed of a collection of short films created by illustrators, animators, directors, and creative coders, this site is bringing the traditional Yule Log back and into the digital age. So gather ’round and warm your hearts and hands with us on the web this holiday."

Billy Bob Thornton Was Hammered During Filming And Other Things You Might Not Know About ‘Bad Santa’:
"Generally, Christmas movies tend to cater to the family friendly genre, which is probably why myself and so many others love Bad Santa. It’s the anti-family friendly Christmas movie, trading heartwarming for vulgarity as Billy Bob Thornton plays a perpetually drunk Santa Clause who enjoys anal sex with women in department store dressing rooms. Billy Bob’s foul-mouthed mall Santa and his equally crude elf cleaned up at the box office in 2003 with the movie pulling in $76 million and becoming an instant holiday classic."

The Best Alternative Animated Christmas Movies:
"A camera in virtual motion allows us to follow the journey of a golden train ticket as it ripples, rolls, lifts, drops and swirls like a snowflake across mountain tops, through forests, past packs of wolves before finally resting on the beak of an eagle. It’s a glorious long take, and it’s from Robert Zemeckis' 2004 film, The Polar Express. The sequence is about winter, set amid a larger movie that’s very specifically about Christmas. This sequence, then, is a smart reminder of the visual allure and possibilities available to filmmakers in their depictions of both seasons."