released December 23, 2023

The words and chords we used are found in the Christmas songbook here: wychwood.xyz/songbooks/
(If you want to play along with these recordings, we tuned our instruments down a half-step for Silent Night, Jingle Bells/Rock, I heard the Bells, O Come Emmanuel, and O Holy Night.)

Fair-use sound snippets and inspiration were gathered with thanks from:
Black Christmas (1974)
Silent Night, Bloody Night (1972)
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Gremlins (1984)
Poppy (is your mommy)
BBC Voices of the First World War
Duncan Barrett's Short History of the Christmas Truce
CBC talking about the Christmas truce
Michael Moore talking about Christmas bombings and genocide
Our Changing Climate talking about "Why We Need a War On Christmas"
Valerie Vande Panne talking about how "We Can Reclaim Christmas from Capitalism"
Paul Ringel talking about “Why Children Get Gifts on Christmas”
Stephen Nissenbaum talking about "The Battle for Christmas"
Thoughtslime talking about Rare Exports
Hbomberguy documenting the moral panic of the war of Christmas
Crimethinc talking about Christmas
Alan Lomax talking about the Puritans' war on Christmas
News from American Prestige, CBC, NPR
Various forgotten things
(No thanks or respect to any corporations that pretend to own any of these creations.)

~~~
Seriously, though, go watch Our Changing Climate's video on "Why We Need a War On Christmas" or read Valerie Vande Panne's articles on the commodification of Christmas.

Rant incoming...

To anyone who wants to put the Christ back in Christmas, why not start by remembering the Christmas story stars a peasant family in occupied Judea (AKA Palestine)? This was a family who got shoved around their land by colonizers (for a census) when they were just trying to welcome a new baby into the world. They then became refugees and had to flee to Egypt on account of the systematic slaughter of children in their home. Good thing that sort of thing doesn't happen anymore, right?

(Also if you want to make Christmas traditional again, it wasn't an important holiday to Christians until it was reinvented as a celebration of consumerism in the privacy of the nuclear family's home in the early 20th century. On the other hand, it was always an important pagan holiday dedicated to public revelry and sanctioned power reversals, like the poor getting to harass the rich with drunken wassailing until they were paid off with alcohol and silver – something that survived in a sanitized form as public carolling.)

So, Happy Yule, one and all!