Back on Monday? But that's the Boxing Day holiday!

Upvoted for "disheartening".

When I was a teen my dad - who was a very talented trumpet player in his youth, but hid that when he joined the Mounties at age 18 because he didn't want to be relegated to the RCMP band - gave me his one and only piece of dating advice: 'Don't date a drummer, they're all flakes.'

I guess I have a soft spot for it because I literally grew up with it; I was five when it first aired in 1969, and I remember one year shortly after that when we were watching it as a family (yes, families used to do that kind of thing), when Karen said she'd go with Frosty and then added 'But I have to be home for…

I identified Ravenscroft as the singer many years ago, probably by the late 1960s (when I was six or seven), because he was the main voice actor/singer on a Disney record I had at the time, All About Dragons, and as soon as I heard him on the record I knew he had to be the same man who sang "You're a Mean One, Mr.…

I don't know if I saw How the Grinch Stole Christmas when it first aired in1966 - I was just short of three years old at the time - but it's a part of every Christmas I can remember as a kid. I have the soundtrack - which has the entire show (with extra verses for some of the songs that were cut for TV), along with…

In World War II, after the fall of France and before the Americans decided to join in, Britain's largest allied partner in terms of troops and equipment was Canada.

8:30 in Newfoundland.

I was just going to quote that! Good old Foster Hewitt. On the rare occasions I catch the opening of the early game on Hockey Night in Canada (I'm not a Leafs fan, and they're always the early game), I love hearing that.

Getting the Sears Christmas Wishbook was a highlight of the Christmas season for m when I was a kid (that, and breathlessly watching and waiting for the one and only seasonal showing of things like How the Grinch Stole Christmas, because in those pre-videocassette days of the early 1970s if you missed it when it…

No, we don't do sausage and bacon wraps much over here (I'm Canadian). The first time I had them at Christmas dinner was the first year I lived in England (well, Wales, actually), when my British-born husband made them. We always have them at Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners now.

I like the version The Chieftains do on The Bells of Dublin.

As a Sherlockian, I'll just note that Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) featured one of the very earliest applications of CGI. Wikipedia states that "The film is notable for including the first fully computer-generated photorealistic animated character, a knight composed of elements from a stained glass window. This effect…

Setting it at Christmas explains why there are so many people at the office after hours (since Gruber and co. need a lot of hostages) and why John has flown all the way to New York to be there (because he wants to be with his wife and kids at Christmas). While there are a couple of other ways to get a lot of people to…

As someone who would happily watch Kinnear recite the phone book, I tend to agree that other, less interesting, characters (to me, anyway) got more screen time at his expense; but I thought Hartnett was excellent as Ethan. I'd rather have seen less of Reeve Carney's Dorian Gray, if it meant more Rory Kinnear (and I'd…

I'm old enough to remember him as Col. Crittendon in Hogan's Heroes (just after the show went into syndication), and was always glad to see him turn up in a movie or TV show; he always had something of the bumbling 'Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson' vibe going (and he did indeed play Watson in a pretty dreadful TV version of …

Anyone who wonders what all the fuss is about Eva Green needs to look no further than the season three Penny Dreadful episode 'A Blade of Grass'. It's one of the most compelling hours of television I can remember, with Green - never one to hold anything back - giving it her all, more than ably matched by two-time…

We've tried it a few times here in Canada, but Quebec seems to have finally gone off the idea. Have fun, Scotland! We didn't call the process the 'neverendum' for nothing.

No Penny Dreadful? Shame. . . .

Thank you for mentioning The Snowman. I was unaware of the book (or the short film) until I moved from Canada to England in 1992, when I found that it (or at least the song from it, 'Walking in the Air', sung by boy soprano Aled Jones) was everywhere from December 1 onward.