Here we are again getting ready to celebrate another Christmas together.

Maybe you just discovered Christmas past this season, or maybe you've been listening since the beginning in

2016. Maybe you're listening to this episode when it arrives on Christmas Eve, or maybe it's

Christmas Day or some other day. The important part is that we're all together one last time

for Christmas of 2018. So let's close things out by taking a look back at some of the news and events and trends from this year,

and maybe we'll have occasion to revisit some of them in future seasons of the show,

because starting tomorrow, Christmas of 2018 belongs to Christmas past.

Lots of new music this year. We had a new album from The Monkeys and one from William Shatner,

and I honestly can't decide if it's awesome or crazy or crazy awesome.

Greg Dooley released a single of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,

and that was a very cool surprise for people like me who love his bands,

the Afghan Whigs and the Twilight

singers. But the undisputed champion this year is Ingrid Michelson. Her album

harkens back to the golden age of Christmas music classics, and it is just about

perfect. As for movies, we had the new Grinch animated movie, which did very well, and

the Nutcracker in the Four animated movie, which did very well, and the Nutcracker

in the Four Realms, which did not.

Netflix released a small handful, including the Kurt Russell movie, The Christmas Chronicles,

which earned 20 million streams in its first week, pretty popular movie, and a little shout

out to my home state, that story is set in Lowell, Massachusetts,

even though it was shot in Canada. The Hallmark Channel movie Juggernaut keeps on

juggering. They released a record 38 movies this year, and I hear that next year they're

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