Episodes
Hey friends! We had several more episodes planned for this season of A Podcast For Christmas, but we hit holiday burnout, and we hit it hard. So we're going to practice some self-care and end the season earlier than expected. We will be back in full swing next year, but for now, please enjoy some outtakes with Mike and Sean from our music episode earlier this season. Until next time, may your years be new and your resolutions be reasonable.
Published 01/01/23
Tighten your sash and grunt like a big dumb ape, because this week we're honoring the classic holiday tradition of identity theft! That's right, we're talking about 'The Santa Clause,' the 1994 family comedy that took Tim Allen from tool time to yule time. We talk about Bernard the sexy dreadlocked elf, casual Christmas falafel, toxic masculinity, and ... QAnon? It's all hot cocoa and body horror down at the Podcast For Christmas headquarters, so shove a kayak under the tree and let's Krumholtz!
Published 12/11/22
Loosen your belts and kill the turkey, because today marks the official unofficial start of the Christmas season! That's right, it's Thanksgiving Day, and what better way to celebrate than with America's most wholesome animated family, The Belchers? On this episode of A Podcast For Christmas, we yak about TV's Bob's Burgers and their canonical Thanksgiving episode, "An Indecent Thanksgiving Proposal," and is it possible that we stumble onto the meaning of life along the way? We're having...
Published 11/24/22
Change all your radio presets to B101 because it's time to talk Christmas music! Whether you love it or hate it, Christmas music is an inescapable element of the holiday season, and we hope you'll find our first-ever music-obsessed episode equally unavoidable and all-consuming. Your hosts are joined this week by family and friends to discuss all-time favorites, guilty pleasures, nostalgia, and the Grade A electronic cheese of Sir Paul McCartney. We're rocking all the way around the Christmas...
Published 11/13/22
This week, we venture into the dark heart of the American experiment with a nativity play, a bounce house, and some of your favorite distressingly right-wing actors. It's 'Four Christmases,' a certifiable not-classic that nevertheless holds some highly specific value for our hosts. We talk about childlessness by choice, Peak Vince Vaughn Territory, singers who act in movies but don't sing in them, and the undervalued comedy stylings of Reese Witherspoon. It's a nightmare landscape peopled...
Published 11/05/22
Welcome to the third season of A Podcast For Christmas! And what better way to kick off the Christmas season than with a Halloween movie? In this season premiere episode, we talk about 'The Nightmare Before Christmas,' the classic Tim Burton film that is somehow not directed or even written by Tim Burton. There's pumpkin kings and oogie boogie men and no small amount of cultural appropriation afoot, so grab your candy corn and your Jack Skellington hand puppets and let's make Halloween a...
Published 10/28/22
Aaaaaaaand we're back! And not a moment too soon! Your gracious hosts have taken a break from podcasting this season, but we couldn't ignore Food Network & Discovery Plus's 'Candy Coated Christmas,' starring (kind of) everyone's favorite home cook, the Pioneer Woman herself, Ree Drummond! Fans of the show will know why we could not pass up this cavity-inducing gem, and fans of food media will be delighted to find that this episode is about 90% blathering about YouTube cooking shows....
Published 12/24/21
It's that time of year again (kind of)! Christmas in July is upon us, so take a break from the godawful heat and smothering humidity to enjoy some outtakes from Season One of A Podcast For Christmas. We'll be back this fall with more weather-appropriate banter to put you in that cookie-baking, stocking-hanging, crippling-anxiety-at-the-thought-of-spending-hours-with-family-members-who-vote-wrong-and-don't-mind-telling-you-why spirit!
Published 07/25/21
***SPOILERS AHEAD*** Do you yearn for the days when print media was king, when intrepid newspaper editors-in-chiefs traversed the lower forty-eight just to win back estranged Dear Abbies? If so, you might just be the writer of Christmas She Wrote, in which New York therapist-turned-advice-columnist Kayleigh (Danica McKellar) is unceremoniously fired by Tripp (Dylan Neal), the handsome herald of the paper's new draconian regime. And where do wounded Manhattanites run when their high-powered...
Published 12/22/20
***SPOILERS AHEAD*** Nothing says Christmas quite like ... time travel? In our latest yuletide adventure, we dive headfirst into quantum plot mechanics with A Timeless Christmas, in which a wealthy turn-of-the-century something-or-other (Ryan Paevey) stumbles a hundred-ish years into future and winds up in a very 2019 idea of what 2020 would have been like. Luckily, he's still in his own home, which is now a museum kept up by the efforts of a newly-single historian (Erin Cahill). Will true...
Published 12/15/20
***SPOILERS AHEAD*** There's an old saying: "Never kiss a man in a Christmas sweater." Okay, maybe it's not an old saying, or a saying at all, but Maggie (Ashley Williams) sure seems to think it is! She's a schoolteacher on a snowy military base who "accidentally" beats a Christmas-sweater-wearing architect named Lucas (Niall Matter) nearly to death with the business end of a Douglas fir. Now Lucas is out of commission and Maggie is feeling guilty. Luckily, there's only one way to rebalance...
Published 12/09/20
***SPOILERS AHEAD*** Next up in our yuletide safari through the jungle of jingle is On the 12th Date of Christmas, in which Iowa native Jennifer (Mallory Jansen) tries to make a name for herself as a game creator in cutthroat Chicago while butting heads with Aidan (Tyler Hynes), her reluctant and standoffish collaborator. As part of a Christmas-themed scavenger hunt game, they are all but forced to spend a romantic week together, even as they vie for the same promotion. Do sparks begin to...
Published 11/27/20
***SPOILERS AHEAD*** First up in our jaunt through this season's quaint and cozy offerings is Jingle Bell Bride, in which an ambitious New York wedding planner (Julie Gonzalo) finds herself marooned in deepest Alaska. The chilly frontier is made warmer by the welcoming locals, one of whom is a handsome flower merchant (Ronnie Rowe Jr.) whose easygoing manner might be just what our misplaced Manhattanite needs. All this and an elephant dart full of Christmas cheer on this episode of A Podcast...
Published 11/20/20
It's that time of year again! And what better way to close out one of the most surreal years in human memory than with a deep dive down some of the most wholesome rabbit holes basic cable has to offer? Join hosts Angela Harmon and Mike Fisher as they traverse the glittering, peppermint-scented landscape of late-capitalist Americana that is the Hallmark Christmas movie. Every week, we sample another of Hallmark Channel's maddeningly approachable wares and weigh it on our very scientific scale...
Published 11/13/20