The Official Start of the Christmas Season.
Hello everyone and Happy Thanksgiving to all those south of the border. If your lucky like me your at home, watching football, and eating far to much junk food. This is the first of what I plan to be a number of Christmas related blog posts over the next few weeks.
Some people (especially our American friends) would say that Thanksgiving is the start of the Christmas season. Many of them start shopping at this point and the big guy himself Santa Claus closes out the Thanksgiving day parade in New York City. Now I buy into this a little bit. I go to malls, I drink my egg nog, and I watch copious amounts of Christmas specials and movies. There is however one thing that happens every year that always signals to me that Christmas is right around the corner. Generally speaking this even takes place the last Friday before Christmas and it is the untitled, unannounced David Letterman Christmas special.
Each year since 1986 Darlene Love has joined TV Boy, David Letterman on both NBC and CBS and performed her holiday classic "Baby, Please Come Home". Now I love David Letterman, I truly believe he is gods gift to television. I think of him as people of previous generations think of Milton Berle, Bob Hope, and Johnny Carson. He really is the consummate broadcaster of the last half century. This annual Christmas tradition is really one the most special parts of David Letterman's late night incarnations.
In recent years the special has followed a familiar and lovable template.
After the monologue Paul Shaffer tells a story about Cher doing a Christmas special sometime in the 1970's and proceeds to do his impression of Cher singing "Oh Holy Night." (Sorry videos not viewable on mobile)
Next Jay Thomas comes on to tell what Dave considers to be the best talk show guest story ever.
After the telling of the "Lone Ranger" story next up is the Christmas Quarterback Challenge. What is the Christmas Quarterback Challenge you ask? Well it's remarkably simple. You see there is a meatball skewered through the spire of a miniature Empire State Building placed atop the Late Show Christmas tree, Then Jay and Dave throw footballs at the meatball trying to knock it down.
After the challenge there is usually a guest and then the moment that everyone is waiting for: Darlene Love performs, Each year the performance is electric and you can tell that everyone on the staff and in the audience is really into it. They bring in extra pieces for the CBS Orchestra, there's fake snow, special lighting. It truly is the start of the Christmas season.
If all goes as it has in previous years Darlene's final performance on Letterman will take place on December 19. Mark your calenders. As usual I hope you find your time on this site to be time (and bandwidth) well wasted.
