christmas

With less than 20 days until Christmas, people are flooding 5th Avenue in New York to get a glimpse at their legendary holiday window displays.

It happens every year, and every year you have to push through a warm tourists screaming at each other. It's as if these families don't actually want to come to this thing because they spend the whole time screaming at each other. It's very unpleasant. Thankfully, like most things, technology is here to save us from spending time with other people.

You don’t want this to happen again, do you?

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Of course not, which is why Google came up with Window Wonderland.

With Window Wonderland, Google allows you to take a virtual tour through the window displays. Finally, you have the chance to actually enjoy the streets of New York without getting splashed with mud by a passing cab. You can choose the experience, either let your mouse do the walking or put your phone three inches from your face and enjoy the VR experience. You can check out the South Park characters at Barney's or the dolls over at the American Girl store. It's really however you like celebrating the holidays. 

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Check it out and be more like dat boy becuase of it:

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The Elf on the Shelf is a horrific Christmas tradition.

Designed to scare children into good behavior, the Elf is a cheery-eyed Santa crony. He monitors children for the big man, reports back, and ultimately decides whether you end up on the naughty list or not.

Or so we’re told.

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Since 2004, the Elf on the Shelf has terrorized children with its watchful gaze and frozen smile. Well, it’s time to pay the piper.

The father-son team over at What’s Inside took a razor to the Elf recently to reveal the plastic, cottony innards and shut down this ruse once in for all.

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So what was inside? Did the spirits of a thousand convicted murderers flutter out of the Elf’s stomach?

Well, not exactly. It’s mostly just filled with catharsis, plastic beads, and cotton. Still, pretty great to watch this little creep get torn to shreds.

The annual Christmas tree lighting at 30 Rockefeller Center in New York City is a hallmark of the holiday season and has been since long before the “War on Christmas” began. Heck, it’ll probably be there long after the “War on Christmas” ends, if a day ever comes.

94 feet tall, the Norway spruce that lights up 30 Rock has five miles of mult-colored LEDs and a Swarovski star packed with 25,000 crystals. Modesty is not this tree’s strong suit. The same could not be said for the first Rockefeller Christmas tree, however. 

85 years ago, on Christmas eve 1931, construction workers stopped building Rockefeller Center long enough to put up a 20-foot-tall balsam tree, which they decorated with cranberries, paper, and tin cans. You can see this Charlie Brown-esque tree in the photo above, along with a foreman “standing on a wooden crate and passing out holiday checks and bonuses to laborers wearing overalls and boots coated in dust,” says Time.

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This was all during the depression, so everyone was understandably pretty miserable. In fact, Rockefeller Center construction was responsible for putting tens of thousands people back to work. “It was also the single largest and most expensive private development in the history of the world at the time,” says Daniel Okrent, author of Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center and a former LIFE magazine managing editor.

Two years later, in 1933, the official Christmas tree lighting ceremony kicked off “when a 40-ft.-tall tree illuminated with 700 lights debuted outside the old RCA building. And while NBC broadcasted the festivities on the radio, the first televised tree lighting ceremony took place in 1951 on The Kate Smith Show.”

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It’s the most wonderful time of the year, when company Christmas parties begin springing up across the world. Who will have too much to drink and end up with a lampshade on their head? Probably you.

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But that’s not really a huge problem in Austria because everyone’s afraid to leave their house? Why? What’s to be afraid of on Christmas? How about Krampus, the Austro-Bavaria Apliine folk-beast? Krampus is half goat, half demon, half party animal, and all evil.

Who would want to celebrate this kind of thing? Duh doi. The Austrians, who paraded Krampus costumes in the streets on Saturday for their annual Krampusnacht festival. Watch in horror as these anthropomorphic goat demons stalk the streets, threatening to beat bad children who will be praying for coal after a visit from this horned monster.

According to The Telegraph, “Thousands of people gather in Hollabrunn Market Square, Austria, to watch more than 120 Krampus impersonators take to the streets.”

Check out some terrifying footage of the festival. These costumes are amazing: 

via Telegraph

Whatever. This thing still isn’t scarier than Elf on a Shelf. Get outta here with that thing.

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Move over, Elf on a Shelf, because Santa Claus is coming to town.

You'll be seeing some new, futuristic modes of surveillance this Christmas, as two new Santa Cameras hit the shelves. Meant to scare children into behaving, these new Claus-monitoring systems aim to replace the Elf on the Shelf as the premiere Santa surveillance hardware.

Created by Emmiroo’s Photography & Gifts, the Santa Camera looks like a security camera you'd see in a store, however, this supposedly has a direct line to the big man himself, who presumably sits in a room surrounded by television screens as a opposed to doing his job. This leads to an important question: Is Santa Claus' magic bound to the technology available at the time, or has he always had these security cams and chose not to use them.

Santa is bringing some next level fear and intimidation this holiday season. The Cam even comes with a cryptic note written by Kris Kringle, indicating that he’s got “keep a very close eye on you all.” We don't know what Santa thinks we did, but whatever it is, we're sorry.

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In addition to the physical camera, Santa Cam ornaments are also set to appear on Christmas trees this holiday season.

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It’s only a matter of time before a whistleblower leaks the wide range of intel Santa’s collecting in the North Pole, Snowden style.

Check out The Huffington Post for more on the terrifying future we now live in.

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While not the holiday tradition in America, in England, the British department store John Lewis crushes it with the Christmas commercials. You’re probably thinking, is this better than the Hess Truck commercials? Yes. Or maybe you’re thinking, what’s a Hess truck commercial, because that might be a regional reference. Anyway, this is a Hess truck.

That’s not how this was supposed to go. John Lewis, right.

This year’s John Lewis ad continues the store’s legacy for delivering holiday cheer at discount prices. The price today? Free. For no money at all, you can watch this commercial that features a bunch of really cute animals bouncing on a trampoline.

In these despondent times of confusion and uncertainty, isn’t that we’re all looking for, a couple of computer-generated animals bouncing on a trampoline? There's a really cute boxer pup named Buster. Buster.