Paula’s Pop Week: Get into the Christmas spirit in one day – the challenge

If you’ve had a column for several years, at some point you start to repeat yourself. This is not just because you are not unlimitedly creative, but because certain (pop culture) events naturally repeat themselves. Summer hits, Christmas music or the end of the year with its retrospectives are the classics that you always have to go into – and that’s always been fun for me. I willingly dealt with the summer hits in 2024 (Karol G took the thing home), the 2024 review is still pending because I firmly believe in the REAL END OF THE YEAR principle and will therefore wait until the next column – but I still want to here Let me leave you with my favorite joke on this topic, which is from myself: “One music journalist says to another: Honey, we didn’t want to rank anything this year.”

So now it would be the turn of pop culture Christmas products, but I’m not really in the mood. The problem: After I stopped celebrating Christmas about ten years ago, I’ve actually enjoyed the fuss around it even more since then. Christmas became folklore for me, similar to carnival – I celebrated music, films and nuts without having to participate in all the social, religious and anyway crazy parts. But now I accidentally stopped caring about Christmas. Not out of cynicism, but on the contrary. The nice things – homeliness with lights and people, warm drinks, cheesy music, awesome sweets, I just treat myself to them all year round anyway. ANYWAYS, I’ll try anyway, it must be possible to get into the Christmas spirit in, for example: ONE DAY? It’s already Santa Claus, so let’s go.

0. Create a foundation: Completely eat up a Christmas calendar.

1. Go to Café Extrablattwhere it is always comfortably furnished, a lot of red, always a little too cluttered, now at Christmas time there are Christmas trees, there are “presents” lying around – oh how I thought as a child that there really was something in these decorative gifts… There is definitely too. In any case, “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” by Mariah Carey will be playing at some point, that’s the push I need, after all, she’s the Queen of Christmas… unfortunately the song is just a mega banger – the Christmas mood doesn’t seem to arise yet , I’d rather go to the Disse now.

2. Partying and Christmas don’t have to be mutually exclusive. On the way home I pump out “Big Santa” by Saweetie because that happens to be the first song that pops into my head from the “New Christmas Songs 2024” playlist. “I need a big, big Santa,” hehe. I have a weakness for when religion, tradition and all that stuff is completely undermined and then it’s honestly just about fucking and consumption. But Xmas is still far away.

3. Maybe you’d rather blast old songsthat mean something to you? For me especially from 8 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS – the album by Destiny’s Child. It’s been my only Christmas ritual for over 20 years – put this record on, be happy about it. And by putting on the record I mean putting the CD in the CD player. And by putting a CD in the CD player I now mean streaming it somewhere.

The 2024 effect: I’m feeling a bit nostalgic, I’m very happy, but is it also Christmassy? Goes.

4. Getting upset about something. Anger is a key emotion around Christmas. You eat it up and let it out in a voice message to your girlfriend after the holidays, after you’ve left your families again. For example, I’m angry about Band Aid’s 40th anniversary special version of “Do They Know It’s Christmas.” Not because she’s a political asshole, but because musically she’s just really shitty.

5. Watch your first Christmas movie. Lindsay Lohan has once again starred in a Christmas film and the promotional images have many people wondering what she had done to her face, the 38-year-old woman. Body images – also an important topic during the holidays. The film, whose title is “Our Little Secret,” is about how she gets back together with an old love, even though both are now in new relationships. This happens around Christmas – bang, done, story. The film is quite funny, has a cool cast, is a nice Sunday activity, there’s actually hardly anything to complain about. To get me into the Christmas spirit, I’m still missing a deep supporting storyline that such films use to try to become evergreens. Unfortunately, I was never sad.

6. Watch the second Christmas movie. Christmas RomComs are the new dime novels and Netflix is ​​the grabber table. And they are mostly a millennial dream. Our favorite stars are playing. In “Meet Me Next Christmas” it’s Christina Milian and you’re really happy to see her again. She wants to meet someone she met a year ago for a concert and who will become her true love. To do this, she goes looking for a ticket with a wish-fulfiller – a good plot, in my opinion! Especially after this Ticketmaster year. As in all of these films, you know exactly how things will end right from the start – it’s the journey that counts. Here it’s also quite sweet, the Pentatonix, for example, play a major role, there’s every potential, but the people who wrote the film let too much go to waste. Among other things, finally getting into the Christmas spirit. SHAME.

7. I turn on Sia’s Snowman song out of frustrationit’s beautiful, a modern classic. The first tear. PMS.

8. There has to be something stronger here. “Love Actually”, “Kevin – Home Alone”, Dean Martin, The Ronettes, Frank Sinatra, plus equip the smoker and light it.

The problem: I know all of these things by heart so much that I am the sound and video carrier for them, I don’t have to play any of them anymore, the films and songs have long been pieces of meat on me. I just have to think about the smell of incense candles and everything here is fogged up. I’m immune, cut off.

9. Walmart releases a commercial that doubles as a Gilmore Girls reunion. So one of Lorelai, Luke and Kirk. It almost bothers me, Stars Hollow in the snow is really very convincing… But the commercial is too short for that and… well, just a commercial.

10. The third Christmas movie: “Hot Frosty.” Wow, this is about as trashy as it gets. The protagonist is played by Lacey Chabert (for millennials: she was Gretchen Wieners in “Mean Girls” (with Lindsay Lohan)!) – who has actually done nothing other than star in Christmas films for ten years (envy!). In any case, she plays a woman whose husband died of cancer, who grieves and at some point puts a scarf around a snowman, which brings it to life and then of course they get together at some point. Like in the song by Sia somehow, or like the topos of Sleeping Beauty just applied to a man. Would I like my time back because I saw the movie? Yeah. Will I watch any other films with Lacey Chabert? Of course. Until. I. What. feel.

But now I have to go to the Christmas party, I’ll report back afterwards.

What happened so far? Here is an overview of all the pop column texts.