christmas

You’ll shoot your eye out, or will you?

Don’t you want to know if a bb gun can shoot your eye out will? What about if you put a blow torch on your head for seven seconds? If a 95mph snowball hurts?

Now, before you run out and try them for yourself, these "professionals" tested them out for themselves. From A Christmas Story to Home Alone, these two test out the most famous Christmas movie myths. Watch as they shoot a cow eye with a bb gun, test a 95mph snowball, and more. The results may shock you.

via GIPHY

When you sit on Santa’s lap what do you ask for? A puppy? Rollerskates? For grandpa to still be alive?

Well, these little girls wanted nothing more than a white Christmas. But one cannot control the weather — not yet anyway — leaving this dad, and defacto Santa Claus, out in the cold. But this isn’t the time for sitting down. This when you lace up your snow boots and get to work.

Asif Sheikk of London ordered a truck of snow to order roughly three tons of snow to a communal garden near his house to create a small patch of winter wonderland.

via The Daily Mail

"It was a bit of a race to get it all set up before the girls woke,” he told The Daily Mail. "I had to make sure my wife kept the curtains closed while I built the snowman and placed the cameras. It was a lot of effort but it was so worth it just to see their faces – they totally loved it.”

Check out the video for yourself and let your heart be warmed already.

You ever have one of those dreams where you’re trying to make a statement about asbestos in parliament, but your singing tie keeps going off? It’s a classic.

However, for one memeber of Irish Parliment, it was a reality. 

via Justin Guitar

This Irish MP unexpectedly to imbued his statements about asbestoswith a little Christmas cheer. As he stood up to deliver his remarks to his fellow parliament members, his tie began playing a little version of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” It was a little musical accompaniment to the words “exposure to asbestos.”

This might be a great new tactic to people onboard about the dangers of asbestos. It’ll appeal to kids and elves, for sure.

You, boy, what day is this? said Scrooge hundreds and hundreds of times.

If anyone knows that it’s Heath Waterman, a YouTuber and self-proclaimed “idiot” who spent a year compiling hundreds of versions of A Christmas Carol and turning them into one, single version.

via Comedy Central

The video highlights how many different versions of Scrooge’s story there are, jumping from a Batman comic to Veggie Tales in a single cut. But there’s a seemingly endless array of version cut together through film, TV, audio, books, and more.

As The AV Club puts it:

"There’s an unending parade of pop culture figures in here: Oscar The Grouch, Mr. T, Aqua Teen’s Ghost Of Christmas Past From The Future, Sanford And Son, Montgomery Burns, countless audio versions and raunchy parodies, weird old Masterpiece Theater stuff, Lawrence Olivier, Howdy Doody, the Cryptkeeper, a couple of porns, Mickey Mouse, Matlock, Xena, and so on."

This nearly-hour long version of A Christmas Carol makes it’s point, that no matter how you’re telling the story, “bah humbug” always means the same thing.

God bless us, everyone.

via Imgur

Listen up, drug dealers, if you sell your garbage on these streets, consider yourself on the naughty list.

That’s right, Santa Claus is coming to town, and this time, it’s personal.

via South Park

This year, Santa’s got a whole new bag because anti-drug units in Peru are dressing like Father Christmas, perhaps so they can gain entry into any house without a warrant via the chimney. However, Ol’ Saint Nick wasn’t so jolly after a brief stop in Peru, where he raided a suspected drug house, apprehending four individuals who wish they were getting coal this Christmas.

So next time you’re thinking about breaking the law, remember, he’s always watching.

via Toons Artie

Not all heroes wear capes, but this one might. Frankly, we don’t know becuase their identity is a mystery.

Someone dropped a winning lottery ticket worth $1,000 into a Salvation Army bucket at a Walmart in Erie, Pa on December 6. And we never even got a chance to thank them.

via The Nest

“We’ve received donations of winning instant tickets in the past, but they’re usually in an amount of $10 or $20 – never something of this size,” Major Leslie Walter, officer of the Salvation Army in Erie, told Fox. “We are very grateful for this generous donation, which will help us to serve people and families in need.”

But how can we contact them if we need their help in the future. Like Batman, they’ve disappeared into the night, waiting to fight again.

And should they fight again, please feel free to send winning lottery tickets to The Daily What, mysterious stranger.

via Lady Geekgirl

After a year of people generally treating each other like garbage, it’s nice to have your small heart grow two sizes in an instant. That seemed to be the intention of these Best Buy employees.

via GIPHY

After weeks of seeing the same kid at the same Best Buy Wii station, the employees of the Valley Stream, NY decided to surprise him with a console of his own. They pooled their money together and bought him a Wii-U. 

As they published on YouTube:

"This video was taken in the Valley Stream Best Buy, this kid came in every single day to play the display WiiU, the employees in this store saw an opportunity to make a child smile and did just that. They chipped in and purchased a WiiU for him with their own money. This is amazing, why shop at Amazon when you have genuine people in this world that you can continue to help keep a job."

It’s true. Very rarely does a mailman deliver me a free thing from Amazon. But this video certainly delivered something: Good feelings.

Everyone celebrates the holidays in their own way. Whether you’re lighting the menorah or putting presents under the tree, one thing remains true: The holidays are a season of giving and warm wishes.

Which explains why this pastor gave the gift of cold reality with a dash outright crazy to a line of people waiting to see Santa Claus at the mall this weekend. That'll bring people back into the church for sure. 

via Reddit

Over the weekend, Pastor David Grisham from Last Frontier Evangelism walked into a mall in Amarillo, TX and did a real bang up job of getting people interested in the story of Christmas. Grisham walked up and down the line, telling the children that “There is no Santa Claus.” Here's what he had to say: 

”Folks, my name is Pastor David. Kids, I wanted to tell you today that there is no such thing as Santa Claus. Santa Claus does no exist. The Christmas season is about Jesus. Jesus was born 2,016 year ago... The man you’re about to see today is just a man in a suit dressed up like Santa, but Santa does not exist."

Then addressing the parents, he continued:

"Don’t lie to your children and tell them there’s such a thing as Santa when you know in reality that there are no flying reindeer. There is no workshop on the North Pole. There is no elves making toys.”

Anyway, parents in line didn’t take too kindly to someone with such a tenuous grip on reality lecturing them on reality. So a couple of dads with beards confronted this man and informed him that it’s perfectly fine for them to lie to their children if they want to.

And you know what, it is every parent's right to lie to their children. When they say, you can’t have ice cream for dinner, of course you can have ice cream; they just don’t want you to. Lies all lies!

But according to Huffington Post, there actually is a Santa Claus. They write:

”Whether Grisham knows it or not, historians say the character of Santa Claus as we know him today is based off a Christian saint, Saint Nicolas, whose generosity toward children as a Greek bishop led to him being declared a patron saint of children and bringer of gifts.

One of St. Nicolas’ most famous acts, which may sound familiar to those who celebrate Christmas, was him saving three sisters from being sold into prostitution by dropping a bag of gold down the indebted family’s chimney so they could pay off their dowries. One of the bags happened to land in one girl’s stocking that had been hung up to dry, according to historian Bill Petro.

So open a book, Grisham, and stop trying to ruin everyone’s Christmas by reminding parents that they lie to their children, so their kids can have one nice day out in this awful year.

via Reddit

For some reason, picking out the perfect Christmas tree puts people on pins and needles. Let’s get something straight, the only needles you should be on are the ones that fall from your tree.

That’s enough kidding around becuase finding the perfect tree can make or break your Christmas. So unless you want to have a terrible Christmas and have your family hate you, you better listen to stand-up comic and unaccredited Christmas tree enthusiast Joe Pera. He might not be a professional, but he knows a thing or two and loves to help. He also has an Adult Swim special on the subject

Pera recently appeared on a Detroit local news show to help the morning crew pick out the perfect tree. He tells them about his trip to Anderson’s tree farm in Newbury, Michigan, where the farm’s proprietor Merle and his wife Caroline taught him a whole lot. The segment, with the stuttering and dead air, is as soothing as they are unsettling.

The whole thing is delightfully awkward in the best way possible, and when this anchor tells him that she uses a plastic tree, well, things get tense.

via Splitsider

He made the rounds that morning, delivering Christmas tree to a few other shows to similar results.

Silent night. Holy night. Artificial Intelligence, right? Sort of.

Look, we all know that eventually artificial intelligence will replace humanity. There’s nothing we can do to stop that. But it would seem that researchers at the University of Toronto are looking to speed things along.

Inverse reports that in a test to see how well A.I. could master the feeling the of holiday cheer and yuletide sentiment, the researchers forced a computer program to look at a picture of a Christmas tree and write a song about it. Not only are they proving that A.I. can write songs — which explains Coldplay — but also that it can capture the feelings associated with the holidays, decidedly human feelings.

via Reddit

Well sort of. The lyrics don’t instill a lot of faith in our new A.I. overlords:

“Lots to decorate the room/The Christmas tree is filled with flowers.

I swear it is Christmas Eve/I hope that is what you say.

The Best Christmas present in the world is a blessing/

I’ve always been there for the rest of our lives.

A hundred and a half hour ago/ I’m glad to meet you.

I can hear the music coming from the hall/ A fair tale

A Christmas tree. There are lots and lots and lots of flowers.”

Of course this could be code, which we will only decipher until after it’s too late, especially the cryptic line “I’ve always been there for the rest of our lives.” In fact, what we’re probably hearing here is not a Christmas song, but some sort of National Anthem for the United States of Artificial Intelligence.

via Gifs Boom

We are in so much trouble.

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?

via GIPHY

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. 

via Window Wonderland

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

via GIPHY

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.

via GIPHY

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.

via Imgur

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.

via Randar

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.”

via Peanuts