Welcome to the 5th annual countdown of unheralded, unbelievable and/or underwhelming holiday songs! I’ve been collecting festive music for decades now and even I am a little stunned at how much ground this project has covered since it started in 2019. But there’s always more. The pile of songs meant to be played in December is so tall, in fact, that if we didn’t pull a few out each year the whole thing could fall on us. And then where would we be?
We start this year with the much-missed Pee-Wee Herman. Other than the legendary bike in “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure,” there’s maybe no greater vehicle for the gifts of Paul Reubens’ alter ego than a Christmas special. It’s a joyous time of year, and Pee-Wee is all about joy – specifically, he’s about channeling the joy that comes from distilling the truest essence of yourself and then running away with it. Nobody else would have or could have put together a Christmas show with Grace Jones, k.d. lang, the Del Rubio Triplets, Whoopi Goldberg, Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, Charo, Little Richard, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Oprah. And even then he ends up stealing the show anyway.
Watch the whole special this year and say thanks that we live in a world where this exists.