Christmas Links #9

The Nightmares Before (And After) Christmas:
"If you’ve heard the edition of Looks Unfamiliar with Anna Cale (and if you haven’t, you can find it here), then you will have heard me talking with a suspicious degree of authority about having to scroll really deeply into Netflix in order to find the sort of gloriously bad Christmas Film that you used to pretty much have to get out of the Video Shop because everyone else had already rented everything even halfway watchable."

BBC Online: 2020 in review:
"2020 has clearly been a very unusual and oftentimes painful year in many ways for just about everyone on the planet. Like many organisations, we’ve had to shift the majority of our staff to working from home in a very short timeframe — this was easier for some teams and people than others."

Happy new normal: Christmas 2020 around the world – in pictures:
"From Santa bubbles to drive-through decorations and Nativity scenes made of pizza, the socially distanced year like no other is giving us a masked Christmas like no other. Guardian picture editors look at Christmas around the world in a year upended by the coronavirus pandemic."

John Lennon: I was there the day he died:
"Forty years ago, on 8 December 1980, the former Beatle John Lennon was shot dead as he returned to his home at the Dakota apartment building in New York. The BBC's Tom Brook was the first British journalist to report live from the scene. Here he recounts how Lennon's death has haunted him ever since."

Michael Morpurgo's Tales from Shakespeare:
"Celebrated author Michael Morpurgo's fresh retellings of Shakespeare's timeless stories for schools and families."

Christmas Trees — an Elusive Bit of Happiness for Canadians:
"There’s been a run on Christmas trees as Canadians, trapped inside because of the pandemic, try, in record numbers, to shoehorn joy into their lives."

Symbol of 2020 angst or sophisticated style choice? What to make of black Christmas trees:
"There is a decorating trend that has slowly been creeping, Grinch-like, into the holiday season. People across the country have been ditching their very green evergreens for artificial black trees. It makes sense for right now: With a still-raging pandemic, millions out of work and food pantries inundated, a black tree seems like the perfect symbol for our plagued 2020. But for black-tree lovers, it’s not a symbol at all. It’s a stylistic choice, one that devotees say is classic, glamorous and extremely versatile."

“Broadcast on all known frequencies, and in all known languages…”
"I really need to get back to watching Orange is the New Black, you know. I got bogged down at the end of Season 4. Is she gonna shoot him? Is she? IS SHE? So in order to get back on track, recently I… erm, watched an old IBA Engineering Announcement from 1990 instead."

'Emotional But Rational': Ikea Discontinues Its Long-Running Catalog:
"Swedish furniture giant Ikea is ending production of its famous catalog, saying the thick compendium of affordable sofas, knickknacks and housewares will leave "a phenomenal 70-year legacy.""