e348. The True Meaning of Gifting: Connection over Consumerism

It’s the holiday season and that means that it’s time to begin the tried and true and for some people massively neurotic holiday tradition: Present Shopping! In this episode, Mav and Hannah Rogers engage in a lively discussion about the anxiety and joy associated with buying gifts, the consumerist nature of the holidays. How do…

CFC: How Do You Holiday Shop?

From Mav: As we reach the Christmas (Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, etc) season and devolve into our annual socially mandated display of affection through conspicuous consumption, we started having this little conversation amongst the cohosts about gift giving. Not for each other… just in general. How do you shop? Are you trying to be as capitalist as…

e245. Cheesy Christmas Movies IV

It’s that time again. Ever since we started this show, we’ve been in something of a renaissance of Christmas Movies. It all started with films by the likes of the Hallmark Channel, but it has since spread to other networks, perhaps most notably Netflix. In the last few years we’ve made it a habit of…

e193. Cheesy Christmas Movies 3

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! If you’ve been listening to this show for a while then you know that the winter holidays mean that we celebrate a certain tradition on our show. Welcome to our annual cheesy Christmas movies special! Even if you don’t celebrate Christmas, chances are you’ve seen the emergent genre that is…

e192. How to Win Christmas & Influence People

Christmas traditions are huge part of popular culture. In fact, they’re such a huge part of popular culture that — despite the so-called war on Christmas — they pretty much infuse the western winter holidays regardless of your religion or beliefs. It’s the “holiday” season. But, no matter how secular we try to make things,…

CFC: Cards, Baking, Music, Shelf Elves & Other Holiday Traditions

From Katya: Sometimes I think being a scholar of culture boils down to constantly recognizing that, actually, it absolutely is that deep. Pretty much all the time. We were talking about seasonal cultural practices that we found interesting. Mav brought up sending Christmas cards as a tradition that made him feel like he was celebrating…

Call for Comments: It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year (For Cheesy Movies)

From Hannah: Thanksgiving is officially over, so we can finally, finally indulge in the sentimental, silly, and surprising seasonal specials that channels like Hallmark have made a holiday staple and streaming services like Netflix have, perhaps, perfected. Mav and I have made no secret of our love for these amazing works of art in past…

e141. Ghosts, Spirits, Scrooge and a Merry Marxist Christmas

Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is likely the most famous Christmas story ever written. First published 177 years ago, it has been produced as stage plays, adapted into dozens of films and spoofed and parodied countless times on television shows, in comics, and other media. Whether from Disney, The Muppets, Scrooged, the original or somewhere…

e139. The 22 Reviews of Christmas (Cheesey Christmas 2)

Christmas movies have been a seasonal spectacle almost as long as there have been movies. A couple years ago, we did an episode speaking to the recent trend of Lifetime, Hallmark and now even Netflix creating a a veritable factory of streaming Christmas content. Those films were aimed at viewers who simply love delightful feel…

e138. Holiday Tradition and Ritual in the Time of COVID

It’s the holiday season. In the United States we just celebrated Thanksgiving, and in the coming weeks that will be followed by Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Years, Pancha Ganapati, Yule, Festivus, Saturnalia, Slackernalia and probably 1000 other winter holidays that get celebrated somewhere around the world. These holidays are often commemorated by coming together with…