A Christmas Spectacular! and a Literal Mug Shot

I'm still a little flattened today, so I've decided to share some of my favorite musical numbers from my favorite Christmas musicals.  (Calm down, I only have, like, two favorites.)  And while I know it's more fashionable to be out of the holiday spirit than in it, I'm going to indulge the cheery side of my personality today.  So, here goes nothing:

If I were still in college, my roommate and I would have already broken out the DVD of A Muppet Christmas Carol and annoyed the people we lived with who found this behavior immature.  This movie tends to be particularly hard to find on television; Christmas 2003 is the only time I remember stumbling across it, and it was such a welcome surprise that my whole family watched.  For this particular holiday pick, I've chosen a song that I think perfectly captures the feeling of Christmas Eve when you're a kid and Christmas is so loaded with excitement.  Here's "One More Sleep 'Til Christmas" (Small note: this is in that odd, early '90s period when they hadn't found a solid replacement for Jim Henson, so Kermit sounds a little off.  Not way off, but enough to add a little unintentional gravity to an otherwise hopeful movie.)

My second selections are from a Christmas movie that follows in the grand tradition of most "classic" Christmas movies - it's a solid film that is, incidentally, set at Christmastime.  What I love about older Christmas movies is the way in which everyday life is balanced with the idea the sense of a little (but not too much) extra possibility on Christmas.  While this description could easily apply to It's a Wonderful Life, right now I'm speaking about White Christmas, which, when you think about it, features exactly one Christmas song.  The rest of the numbers in the movie are about dancing, snow, gratitude, and the pitfalls of life outside the army.  So, the two videos I'm picking have absolutely nothing to do with Christmas.  First, "Count Your Blessings (Instead of Sheep)," featuring the very young, very pretty Rosemary Clooney (I couldn't get the whole song off YouTube, but this works well enough).  Secondly,  here's a song that frequently that gets cut when a network decides that it doesn't have the programming space for the epic version of White Christmas, "Snow," which, I think, perfectly captures the fun of going to Vermont in December.  I have found, though, that repeatedly singing "Snow" both on the way to and during Christmas in Vermont is not something everyone appreciates.

Speaking of Christmas in Vermont, here's a picture of a mug from Rosie's in Middlebury, where I plan to breakfast at some point next week.