Simanaitis Says
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HOLIDAY CHEER 2024
SEASONS’ GREETINGS TO YOU ALL. Let’s close off this at-best mixed year with laughs gleaned from a variety of Internet sleuthing and my fondness for SiriusXM “Radio Classics.”
A Bunch of Dad/Grandpa Christmas Jokes. How much did Santa pay for his sleigh? Nothing—it’s on the house.
What do you get if you cross a snowman with a vampire? Frostbite.
What do you call an old snowman? Water.
A snowman says to an aggressive carrot, “Get out of my face.”
I’m reminded of that great scene in A Christmas Story when the teacher retrieves a carrot from the Principal snowman.
What’s Santa’s favorite pizza? Deep-pan crisp and even.
What kind of motorcycle does Santa ride? A Holly Davidson.
My Favorite Jack Benny Christmas Joke. He’s shopping for a watch and the clerk says, “Here’ a nice clock for $8.50 marked down from $2395.” Jack asks why the huge markdown. The clerk responds, “We take off the Buick.”
Previous Christmas Celebrations Here at SimanaitisSays. “Did Shakespeare Celebrate Christmas?” The Bard made only three references to Christmas in his plays: Twice in Love’s Labour’s Lost, once in Taming of the Shrew.
William Shakespeare, 1564–1616.
But he and other Elizabethans took the holiday seriously with Advent leading to Christmas Day through Twelfth Night, the evening of January 5, which celebrates the visitation of the Magi.
A Festival of Nine Lessons & Carols. This festival at King’s College Chapel commenced at Cambridge in 1918; its BBC broadcasts began in 1928.
A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, Stephen Cleobury, director of music; Benjamin Bayl, organ scholar, EMI Classics, 1999.
For those with access to BBC World Service, the Festival is broadcast live 55 minutes after SimanaitisSays is posted 6:05 a.m. Pacific, Christmas Eve.
R&T’s 1993 Christmas Roadster. SimanaitisSays wrote Christmas Eve, 2022, “Here’s what we put together at R&T for December 1993.”
Yet Other Dad’s Jokes. “Who accompanied St. Nicholas down the chimney?” we asked back then. “No, not the reindeer; they pranced and pawed away up on the roof. Indeed, it was a jerk.” But wait, there’s more: Who else accompanied Santa?
The jerk’s participation is long-known: Read the line beginning “And fill’d all the stockings.” And give Clement Moore some slack about mid-1800s spelling. For the second accomplice, read the line beginning, “Down the chimney” and you’ll see a bound was with him as well.
My Happy Holiday Hiatus. SimanaitisSays takes a holiday break from now until New Year’s Eve. Have a break yourself too, and thanks sincerely for your readership. ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2024
Simanaitis Says 
OMG, all the memorable signatures at the bottom of the poster. I remember a lot of these great ones! Pleasant memories…Merry Christmas to you too, Dennis.
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Back to you. My wife bought me the new book on the Morgan factory.Could not be better,John
I hope this doesn’t come across as bragging, but I’m proud to have taken Fellowship from Kings, Cambridge in ’86 and enjoyed the annual choral ritual, thanks to the Beeb. I look forward to the King’s message tomorrow and the Wales’ contribution.
I’m old enough to recall the Sunday ritual in the late ’40s when the family gathered around our round tube Dumont TV (a hand-me-down from grandparents) to watch Ed Sullivan, and as the oldest, I was allowed to stay up and watch Jack Benny
I recall his frequent lengthy and hilarious interchanges with shopping clerks, often played by an always confused Mel Blanc, who’s sanity is tested by waiting on Benny. In one memorable skit, perpetually parsimonious Jack Benny debated which shoelaces to buy his announcer and foil for his skits, Don Wilson.
Life was simpler back then and we seemed to only be bothered by REAL issues, not imagined ones.
Hello Dennis, thankyou so much for all your emails over the years since R&T was ruined, being English I don’t quite get the Jack Benny joke but the others made me smile. Best wishes to you for Christmas and 2025, from Keith Powell ( Britain’s biggest Chaparral fan, not just the 2J but all models ‘ joke ‘ ).
Holiday Cheer? Nay, t h r e e cheers for Simanaitis Says’ unflagging year ’round curios and expanse. Meanwhile:
“A Child’s Christmas in Wales” by Dylan Thomas
A piece of Welsh-lyrical poetry I love.
Season’s greetings to all. And to paraphrase a good English friend of mine with regards to the state of global insanity “You just have to laugh at the world because that’s all it deserves”.
Three cheers and a toast: to all who here make memorable comments and our gracious host, Merry Christmas and may we have a Happy New Year, every one!
PS: Beeb access is available for online listening, in near-real time. But which BBC channel is the Cambridge Lessons show carried on? Probably BBC 3? Might also be worth looking around their web site for reruns. bbc.com for starters. Finding the live channels for online listening via e.g. VLC player can be a little more challenging, if outside the UK, but not impossible.
As noted, my “Nine Lessons” is on BBC World Service (part of “SiriusXM”).
ps. Must ask. Whatever became of the 12 days of Christmas? Today is but the first day of Christmas, January 5th the last.
After pushing the season since September–received a holiday card catalog the last day of August– merchants here in the US erase every vestige of Christmas a day or two later like embarrassed drunks.
Note, what with Advent the Elizabethans had more than 12 days too.
Thanks. For some reason I saw “World Service” and thought you were listening on shortwave. My parents always had something from Blaupunkt that could receive those bands. Now we have the internet (and satellite radio).
Anyway, my Google (DuckDuckGo)-fu finally kicked in (not enough sleep, too many sweets) and I found it at the BBC web site for those who might want to listen for the first time. Will be available for the next few weeks. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002611f
Happy New Year! The next Really Big Show every year will be the Vienna New Years concert…